


Winter's Child

by VMorticia



Series: Random Fics I'm Probably Never Going To Finish... [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Blood Magic, Fantastic Racism, Gen, Harry Potter was Raised by Other(s), Implied/Referenced Mind Control, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Technology vs Magic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:14:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,833
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27594667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VMorticia/pseuds/VMorticia
Summary: Vernon and Petunia Dursley refused to take Harry in after his parents died, so Dumbledore had to find the next-closest living relative; James Barnes.
Series: Random Fics I'm Probably Never Going To Finish... [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1563013
Comments: 42
Kudos: 242





	1. Blood

**Author's Note:**

> This idea just struck me one night. I'm posting it as I write it. I have no idea if I'll finish it. Tags to be updated as required by new chapters I haven't even begun planning yet. Ratings and warnings unlikely to change, but possible, seeing as I literally have no idea where this is going.
> 
> To make the timelines work, I have moved the events of the Harry Potter books by two decades, so now Harry's first year at Hogwarts in this fic would commence in 2011.
> 
> Standard disclaimer: I own as much as Jon Snow knows. Characters' opinions are not necessarily a reflection of the author's.

\---

The morning after Albus Dumbledore left young Harry Potter upon the Dursleys' doorstep, an ungodly shrieking alarm woke him at 6:32am.

This alarm, he knew, indicated that the Dursleys had rejected Harry. It was not entirely unexpected, but he had hoped that Petunia still had some love left for her sister, enough at least to protect the child.

Apparently not.

Albus sighed deeply, used a spell to dress swiftly, and Apparated directly into the Dursleys' living room. He Obliviated them and took Harry, before they could do the boy harm. He did not wait for them to justify their choices, nor for them to act in any way. The Dursleys had rejected Harry, and as far as he was concerned, that was that. They, and Harry, were safest if they did not know what had happened. The only thing that he did do was leave a note for Petunia, confirming Lily and James' deaths, offering his condolences - she had rejected Harry, but Lily had still been her sister - and that Harry had been taken into his care. That way, if any remaining Death Eaters had the wits to investigate them, they would quickly find out that Harry was nowhere near Privet Drive... and, apparently, never had been.

He returned to his study, child safely in tow, and recast the blood ward spells to detect the next-closest living relative. If there was one.

A neat bloodline drew up from Lily's name to her mother; Iris Evans, nee Oswald, born 13th March 1944. As Albus knew, she had died only five years ago.

From there the line ran up to an unmarried couple; Bouvardia Oswald and James Buchanan Barnes. Bouvardia was also deceased, so Albus didn't bother to read her dates, but James Barnes was marked by the spell as still living. Born 10th March 1917, which would make him 84 years old. Not exactly spry for a Muggle - even if he was younger than Albus - but it would have to do.

\---

The Asset awoke to the unfamiliar sensation of warmth sweeping over his body. He knew this wasn't normal. He couldn't remember the biting cold he should have felt, only an idea of it, an echo; his body had braced for it yet it never came.

He scanned his surroundings, knowing - not from experience but from something far far deeper - that his Handlers would be waiting for him to speak.

But they weren't. He knew the identification his Handlers wore, here in the security of their own base of operations, where they had no need for secrecy... and it was emblazoned on the clothing of all six unconscious men in the room. It most certainly was _not_ on the one remaining conscious man.

There was no protocol for this.

Protocol only stated; wake and then speak.

"Ready to comply."

The old man frowned at him thoughtfully. "Oh my no, this won't do at all," he said in a soft, almost sad tone.

The Asset flinched. Negative feedback meant punishment for the infraction, even if it was unintended.

The man raised his hand, and there was a flash of muted red light.

\---

He woke on a soft, comfortable surface.

A bed, his mind supplied after a couple of seconds.

His head felt like it was buzzing, and when he sat up he felt slightly dizzy... but he carefully kept his balance.

"How are you feeling?" a voice asked.

He looked up. The old man looked familiar, but he couldn't place why. He shook his head to try to get some of the buzzing out.

"Can you tell me your name?"

He opened his mouth automatically to answer, but no words came out... and he found two answers on the tip of his tongue, each determined it was correct and certain the other was wrong.

When he did finally answer, it felt mechanical, familiar, and a touch defiant. "Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, three two five five seven zero three eight."

The man frowned slightly, cocked his head as if remembering a jingle that he had once heard, before the frown became a slight smile and he nodded in some satisfaction. "Ah. I understand your assumption. You are not a prisoner, Sergeant Barnes. Tell me, how are you feeling?"

The more he tried to think how to answer the further away a valid answer seemed to be, and eventually he shook his head. His head hurt, he felt confused and vulnerable, but he also got the feeling this man wasn't going to hurt him... probably not, at least.

The man watched him for a long time, then sighed slightly, a sad, sympathetic sigh. "You are safe here, Sergeant Barnes. Rest, it will help you heal."

Yeah, that sounded like a great idea.

\---

His head was a _lot_ clearer when he woke.

The same guy was watching him, but his mind wasn't feeling so fuzzy and he could better focus on what he was actually seeing. The guy was old, like Gandalf in the Hobbit old, long beard and all.

"How are you feeling, Sergeant Barnes?" he asked.

"It's Bucky," he said, his voice slightly hoarse. Come to think of it, his throat felt dry. No sooner had he thought that than a glass of water appeared in thin air, hovering in front of him.

He stared at it for several long seconds, before mentally shrugging. If it was real, he wanted it. If he was hallucinating, that was the old guy's problem when he looked ridiculous for it.

It was definitely _not_ an hallucination.

Might still be a dream, but this water was cool without being too cold, soothed his sore throat just right, and had been exactly what he wanted.

And it disappeared into thin air when he tried to set it on the bedside table.

"Bucky?"

"Yeah, friends call me Bucky," he said. He felt _safe_ around this guy, but it was the fact that thought crossed his conscious mind that made him hesitate, and turn to look at the man more carefully.

Why the hell would he feel _safe_ around a total stranger? Something was off here.

"Where am I?"

"There is a great deal I wish to tell you, but I wish to ensure you are fully healed from your ordeal first."

He wanted to question that, but as he opened his mouth to ask, a memory came to him. A metal chair, pain, loss.

He shivered.

"It will take some time, but know that I have no desire to harm you. When you are healed, we will talk."

He wasn't comfortable with the way he trusted this man. It felt like a trick, but at the same time he had no reason to argue.

\---

He sat opposite the man, in an old-fashioned office with stone walls. The room felt warm, but not uncomfortably so. There was an eerie sense of peacefulness here.

"I remember all of it. Who I was before, what they turned me into... what they made me do."

The old man nodded, what looked like sadness and sympathy appearing again in his twinkling blue eyes. "Are you ready to hear why I brought you here, Bucky?"

He nodded, but didn't quite dare speak.

"My name is Albus Dumbledore. I shall begin first by informing you that magic is real. It was used to heal your mind, after what was done to you, and I can perform a demonstration if you wish."

"Levitating water glass. Magic. Sure." Bucky muttered, nodding slowly, with a slight shrug. It was weird, but he'd still seen weirder. Guns that disintegrate people...Steve's science-experiment of a growth spurt... Johann Schmidt's face. Magic made no less sense than any of those.

Albus' face contorted into something between amusement and exasperation, but then he nodded. "Very well. Those who practice magic chose, approximately three centuries ago, to conceal ourselves from the rest of the world, creating our own closed communities. It was made to appear as though magic was merely a myth, so that none would go looking for us. It is customary, now, not to tell anyone without innate magic - or at least magical potential - of their own that it exists, unless they are a parent, guardian, sibling, or child of a magic-user. I am making an exception for you, as you are in a position to become the guardian of a magic-user."

"Wait, who the hell would trust _me_ with a kid?" he asked sceptically. Nevermind his own mother had trusted him to help raise his sisters, that was not the point. He had a bad reputation to maintain here.

Albus frowned at him, but it still seemed to be mixed with amusement of some sort. "You are the only living blood-relative of the child in question, who has not already rejected him. Due to the circumstances of his parents' death, he is in need of protection. There is deep, old magic that would protect him, but it would only work if he were in the care of a blood relative."

"And you decided a brainwashed abomination was the best option, huh?" he asked sceptically.

"You are no longer under anyone's control but your own," Albus stated bluntly. "It is entirely your choice, though I shall point out that you would be entitled to magical protection that no non-magical technology can penetrate, should you accept."

His mind flashed back to The Rules that he had lived by as The Asset.

_There is nowhere he can run that they cannot find him._

If Albus could hide him from them... he could handle a kid, right?

Yeah, he'd taken care of his sisters, and Steve when he'd been sick. He could handle a kid.

He nodded. "Okay. What've I gotta do?"

\---


	2. Ice

\---

Steve Rogers was having a strange day. To put it mildly.

First he had woken up in a poor imitation of a hospital room, with a recording of a baseball game he had personally attended on the 'radio', and a 'nurse' who would have gotten in a lot of trouble for her attire in any real hospital Steve knew of.

It had all been a setup, and he had chosen to run.

He made it out into the streets, and that was where he stopped, shocked as he stared up at the strange echoes of familiarity of Times Square painted over with undeniable yet unbelievable futuristic technology. Even the cars were different.

The soldiers from the setup he had escaped were following, and he wasn't sure if he really should keep running anymore - this was way beyond him, right now - when he heard a voice calling his name, from almost the opposite direction. He turned to look, and saw... Bucky.

Bucky was peering out from one of the smaller alleyways, only his face and one arm visible, and beckoned Steve to follow before disappearing around the corner.

Okay, so absolutely nothing made sense.

Steve fully acknowledged the facts that Bucky had died, that he'd thought he had also died until he woke up here, and that every single step he'd taken since he'd woken had felt like a trap and someone else's plan... but that was Bucky, and Steve followed him.

He rounded the corner, only to be grabbed from behind the moment he did. One solid arm across his chest, and strength that rivalled Steve's own. Bucky's voice spoke behind him, "Bananas suck now," and then with a jarring sensation akin to being punched in the stomach - from the inside - they quite suddenly weren't on the streets anymore.

They were in a nice cosy looking little kitchen. Bizarrely, unlike the hospital room, this one seemed  _ real _ , in spite of the unreal means of getting there. It was warm, inviting, and had a merrily crackling fire in the hearth.

Steve was released, and spun around to see that it was indeed Bucky who had grabbed him. "What's going on, Buck?" he asked warily.

Bucky seemed more subdued than Steve remembered him, his smile almost an echo or ghost on his lips, instead of the wide lopsided grin that promised trouble. "You crashed a bloody plane into a glacier. Took a while for anyone to find you. Luckily, it turns out super serum works  _ really _ well with cryogenics... accidental or otherwise."

"Cryogen- what?" Steve asked, a small part of his mind registering Bucky's choice of words. He really had been spending a lot of time in Britain, hadn't he?

"You were frozen. It preserved you until you were found," Bucky clarified, as if speaking to a slow child. "Sorry, Stevie, but the year is twenty-eleven, and boy do you have some catching up to do."

Steve stared at him, trying to figure out if this was some wild joke, or not.

"Okay, let's pretend I believe all that for a minute," he said, shaking his head. "How're you alive, Buck? I saw you fall, I-"

"Zola was trying to recreate the serum," Bucky cut across him. "We trashed his research on the way out, but it worked, sort of. I survived the fall; I know I wouldn't have otherwise." He moved past Steve, now, and took a seat at the small table near the fire. "Come on, sit down. I've got two crazy stories for you, one's a pleasant fairytale, the other's an absolute nightmare, and they're both true."

Steve shifted uncomfortably as he took his seat. "Good news first, I think."

Bucky chuckled darkly, "Okay, sure. I'm happy to start there. Magic is real; that's the short version."

Steve raised an eyebrow at Bucky rather pointedly. "Bucky, you've met my ma, you know I already believe in magic."

Bucky tilted his head to the side for a second. "Is that because she told you all those old Irish stories about fairies, or have you actually seen real magic?"

Steve looked away at that. "She told me her ma was a witch."

Bucky blinked, sat back, and stared at him for a second, an unreadable smile on his face. "I'm not that surprised. My granddaughter was a witch, apparently."

Steve snorted. "Bucky-"

"No, I'm serious," Bucky spoke across him. "It was a surprise for me, too, but once you get past what year it is, and magic is real, it all starts to make a lot more sense from there."

"So what's the horror story then?" Steve challenged.

Bucky met his eyes now, deadly serious and painfully earnest. "I was found at the bottom of the ravine by Soviet soldiers. Turns out, HYDRA wasn't just Nazis; they were everywhere; Russia, England, even America. The Red Skull went rogue, decided he wanted to take over the world on his own - you heard the way he talked, he thought the serum made him a god, or something stupid like that. He figured he could do better than the rest of HYDRA, all on his own... so the rest of HYDRA used him as a scapegoat for all their shit that came to light during the war, and cheered you on when you killed him. Then they went underground, and dragged me with them. They did things to my mind, made me forget who I was, forget I was supposed to fight against them. I- I did some pretty terrible things while they had me... but then out of the blue shows up a real life Wizard. Ten years ago, now, he simply walked into a top-secret high-security HYDRA base, and those bastards didn't know what hit them. He took me, and healed me, and then offered me a simple choice. Remember Bonnie and Connie, from the Stark Expo?"

"Yeah..." Steve said cautiously, wondering at the sudden subject change.

"Well, turns out I knocked Bonnie up," Bucky said, sounding a little embarrassed. He shot Steve a defensive look. "I had no idea, or I'd have done the right thing by her, but- well- she had a daughter, who had a daughter, who turned out to be a witch. My granddaughter fought in her own war against some whacko called Tom Riddle. I saw a picture of Riddle, from the late eighties - what is it with megalomaniacal bastards who want to rule the world, dabbling in the supernatural the wrong way and losing their noses? I mean,  _ seriously?! _ "

"What-?"

"I'll show you later. At least Red Skull looked scary-evil, Riddle just looked kinda funny," Bucky muttered, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Point is, Lily - that's my granddaughter - she was the last person Riddle ever killed, because he used some kind of dark magic that backfired, leaving her son - Harry - orphaned and all the wizards think he's some kind of superhero or something for just being alive. His aunt and uncle - Lily's sister and her husband - wanted nothing to do with him, so I was the next closest living relative. There's this one powerful wizard, who was leading the fight against Riddle; he decided Harry needed magical protection that only living with a blood relative could give him, so he hunted me down. I don't think I was what he was expecting, but it's worked out pretty well for me."

"So what was this choice he gave you?"

"Simple: their magic can hide me from HYDRA, my blood can protect Harry from anyone who might be upset about Riddle's death. All I had to do was take in the kid, and the old wizard gives me pretty much anything I ask for... within reason. He was, let's say, a bit reluctant when I said I wanted you."

Steve snorted, trying not to laugh. "What do you mean?"

"You don't have magic, and you're not the parent, guardian, sibling or child of anyone who does, so technically you're not allowed to know magic's real. But turns out, manipulative bastard that Albus can be, he has a heart. He's also pretty predictable. Harry's safety trumps everything else, in his mind, and I've still not figured out any ulterior motive for it. I might have implied I wouldn't be in a fit emotional state to care for a ten-year-old if anything happened to my best friend, now you were back in the land of the living, again."

"You did  _ not _ threaten a ten year old on my behalf, did you?" Steve asked, aghast.

Bucky shrugged. "He didn't call my bluff, did he? Nah, he's a good kid, I'd never..."

Steve shook his head. "Was I really in any danger?"

"Probably not, but can't be sure. 'Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean they aren't out to get you'. Damn, I love Alastor. Everyone hates how much I love Alastor, probably especially Alastor."

"Who is Alastor?"

"Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moody. Retired, former head of magical law enforcement in the UK. Paranoid son of a bitch; makes Colonel Phillips look cuddly and Dum Dum Dugan look mild-mannered."

Steve opened his mouth to protest that this was impossible, blinked slowly, shook his head and shut his mouth. There were enough impossible things going on right now to be getting on with, and he hadn't even had breakfast yet. Besides, he didn't need that mental picture, even if it was likely completely inaccurate.

"So who were they? The people who woke me up?"

Bucky tilted his head to one side. "They're called SHIELD. The organisation was founded by Colonel Phillips, Howard Stark, and Peggy Carter, but it's huge now. As much bureaucracy as any government organisation, but without the same sort of oversight. I don't like to get too close to them, because anything that big can be infiltrated by pretty much anyone. If I really set my mind to it - with the skills HYDRA drilled into me - I could probably learn all their secrets, with just a couple of years undercover... but I have no motive to try."

"Do you think they'd look for me?"

"You're literally a national treasure, Steve," Bucky laughed. "They'd tear the world apart looking for you. So yeah, you should probably go back. I just didn't want to be near them when I told you I was still alive. I live in the magical world now, best to keep it that way, I think."

"How'd you find me so fast, after I got out of their base?"

"Tracking spell, scrying spell, and something called a Portkey - basically a teleporting talisman. When appropriately motivated, Albus can be very accommodating."

"I take it 'Albus' is this 'hero of who fought against Riddle'?"

"Yeah... hero's a strong word, though," Bucky said "He didn’t exactly jump at the call. He prefers not to get involved with that sort of thing. As far as I can tell, he mostly just prefers tinkering with magic and running his school."

"Not everyone wants to fight, Buck," Steve said. "And it sounds like he stood up when he needed to."

Bucky shrugged grudgingly, not dismissing the point, but not entirely agreeing, either. "He fought because he was the best person for the job, and it was the right thing to do from literally every perspective, both selfish and moral."

"You don’t trust him," Steve said, after a few moments, frowning. 

"Not entirely, no," Bucky agreed. "He's done me some pretty big favours, and while I won't say we really get on, we're civil enough."

"It sounds like he cares about the kid," Steve suggested.

"Yeah, it seems that way. It's the most I’ve seen him care about anyone, actually," Bucky said. 

"Bucky," Steve said. "What aren't you saying?"

Bucky sighed explosively. "Being as fair as I can, I don't think Albus is necessarily a bad person," he said. "But he's a chessmaster, is what he usually is, and he's a lot more ruthless than he lets on. He can be pretty decent, and I think he genuinely prefers being a teacher. But when it comes down to it... you know the type, Steve. The sort of officer who wouldn't hesitate to send someone to their death to get the job done. They might not like it, but they'd do it without batting an eye. Albus is one of those." He frowned. "He's also taking a particular interest in Harry, gone to efforts to protect him that most people wouldn't, even allowing for the fact that Harry's parents were two of his old students and - I think - Albus blames himself for their death, didn't see that they'd trusted the wrong person." He shook his head. "I know what you're going to say, Steve, but it's more than that. That, and less, would be enough for you. But it's more than that. It's not like Harry's the only orphan from that war, after all. Way I see it, the kid's either an anomaly... or the King in Albus' game."

"You don't really think...?" Steve began, eyes widening.

Bucky shrugged. "I'm just calling it like I see it. Albus is real protective of Harry, and considering what Harry survived, something tells me it’s not a coincidence. I'm not gonna judge him unless I see proof of my theory, but it'd be in-character is all I'm saying. Albus believes in 'the right thing', but his idea of it is objective. I've seen it in the way he manipulates people, even when there isn't a fight to be had. I know full well he's using me, and he knows I know. Y'know?"

Steve chuckled faintly. "So you've got a kid now?"

"Legally, as far as the magical world is concerned, I'm his adopted father. He calls me dad. Albus got people to help me take care of him, at first, including this family called the Weasleys - some of their kids are friends with Harry, now - but he didn't count on my knowing what I was doing right off the bat."

"Well, you did have three younger sisters..." Steve muttered, nodding.

"Girls are easy to look after - they sit quietly and have clean hobbies. You remember Hannah, she never made trouble. Harry was a  _ terror _ when he was a toddler." He sighed, likely lost in those memories for a moment... and by the tone of it they were fond memories, in spite of the way he worded it. "I guess I appreciated the help, even if Molly did kind of talk down to me like I'd never seen a child before."

"So where is Harry now?"

\---

Harry Potter had lived, for as long as he could remember, in the same small cottage in Scotland. It didn't exist on maps, and you could only find it if you knew it was there, and that was perfectly normal so far as Harry knew.

He knew his parents had died when he was just over a year old, and his 'dad' had adopted him. He'd generally not cared to know much about the motives of grown-ups, but all the same he knew his dad's 'friend', Albus, was... well, they weren't exactly friends, but both of them cared for him and Harry got the sense that this was the one thing they completely agreed on. Then there was Molly. Harry liked her well enough; she was kind, an excellent cook, if a little smothering sometimes. She'd been around a lot until Harry was five, helping out. Then there had been a disagreement where she'd taken Albus' side and his dad had got angry.

There hadn't been any violence like Harry heard on TV some grown-ups might do, his dad hadn't even told him to leave the room like angry grown-ups usually did. He'd just said, "I don't think we'll be needing your help anymore, tell Albus he'll have to do better next time he tries to control me."

After that, they'd been... well, polite, Harry supposed. But they only really saw each other when Harry spent time with her children, one of whom - Ron - was his best friend. In any case, Harry's dad did  _ not _ like people controlling him, and he'd taught Harry - as much by words as example - not to tolerate it either. Rules were to be questioned, and only followed if they were there for a  _ good _ reason.

Magic was just a natural part of Harry's life and upbringing.

His dad might not really  _ like _ Albus, but it seemed like there was some sort of debt there - Albus was always sending them gifts. It was especially useful, since his dad couldn't use magic for himself. There were a lot of magical objects in the house - usually gifts from Albus - but the only people Harry knew who could do their own magic were Albus and Albus' friends.

Albus' gifts were usually 'practical'. Practical, Harry had long since learned, really meant boring. There was a foe glass and a sneakoscope, and of course the customisable reusable portkey. The portkey was actually pretty cool; it let them visit a lot of places they usually couldn't, since his dad didn't have magic.

Harry knew his dad had secrets. Like the fact his left arm was disguised with an illusion to look normal but it was really metal... and the fact he was way older than he looked, and really Harry's great grandfather by blood and had even fought in the war against Grindelwald.

And someone was after him, so he needed Albus' help to keep them both safe. No one had said it, but Harry had read comic books, he knew the deal - villains use the hero's loved ones against them if they learn about them. Harry wouldn't let anyone hurt his dad that way.

Now, someone new was in the cottage, and Harry was listening at the bannister rails, like he often did when Albus visited. This new guy, his dad seemed very open towards. They talked like they'd been friends forever.

He'd never heard the name of the people who were after his dad before, but to this new guy, his dad said it casual as you please. HYDRA... like the Greek myth. Sounded like a good name for a villain.

He also hadn't known much about what his dad called 'Riddle's stupid Nazi impersonation'. He'd known a lot about the Nazis, from both his dad's stories and the wizarding history books on Grindelwald, but all he'd really heard about Riddle was that he was a 'cheap impersonation' and that he'd killed Harry's real parents.

His dad dealt with things that upset him by insulting those who hurt him... and he said a lot of insulting things about Riddle. Harry did the maths.

This was also the first he'd heard about what the other wizards thought about Harry himself. Aside from Albus' friends, and the Weasley family, he'd only met other witches and wizards while playing undercover - something his dad swore was a valuable life-skill. Now it turned out maybe it had been. What if they'd recognised him? He couldn't imagine being seen as a hero, he was pretty sure he was just an ordinary young wizard.

Harry barely stifled a giggle at what his dad said about Alastor Moody... and by the time he'd fully regained his composure, this new guy - Steve - was asking where he was.

So Harry decided to show himself, tromping loudly down the stairs to announce his presence.

"What did I tell you about eavesdropping, Harry?" his dad chided, in a playful tone that told Harry it wasn't a serious reprimand.

"Don't get caught?" Harry replied promptly.

"Yes... that's exactly what I said," his dad said, nodding and trying to hide a grin.

Steve shook his head. "You didn't sneak back to your room, slam the door open and stomp down the hallway, you just made noise on the stairs. Sloppy, but you'll learn," he said in a friendly enough tone.

"So how much did you hear?" his dad asked.

"Everything," Harry admitted sullenly. "I was going from the bathroom to my room when I heard the Portkey."

"Okay. Few points to clear up, I guess," his dad said, turning to look right at Harry, like he always did when he was about to explain something serious. "Questions?"

"Why would anyone think I'm a hero?"

"Because they don't know what really happened that night; no one does. All anyone knows is that Riddle went there to kill all three of you, something stopped him and you survived."

"Is this really a suitable discussion for a ten-year-old?" Steve asked cautiously.

"Ignorance is bliss, but knowledge is power," his dad retorted to Steve. "Better to give the kid all the relevant facts we have than to let him be swayed by gossip and rumour."

Harry suddenly connected the dots in his head - this new guy's name, and a name from his dad's stories from the war. "Is this the same Steve from when you fought Grindelwald?"

"For the thousandth time, I did not fight Grindelwald. I fought in the same war as him on the opposite side, but we never met. And yes, this is that Steve."

Harry's eyes widened.  _ That _ Steve... his dad's best friend since they'd both been five... and his dad was pushing ninety-five, now. Harry had grown up on stories of  _ that _ Steve. Heart of a hero, even before the science experiment that gave him muscles to match. Single-handedly brought down one of the triad of evil from World War Two, after a two year campaign leading an elite team his dad had been part of.

The Wizarding World had known all about the Red Skull, even though most Muggles only ever heard of Adolf Hitler. His dad had told him that he hadn't known about Grindelwald before adopting Harry, but apparently he'd researched it before Harry had been old enough to ask about it. The Wizarding World  _ knew _ that the Red Skull had stolen from powerful magical beings last seen shortly after Hogwarts' founding, called himself a god, and tried to take over the world... stepping over Hitler, and tripping while trying to step over Grindelwald, in the process.

And this was  _ that _ Steve.

"Wow," Harry said, staring.

"Okay, now keep that face, look in a mirror, and that's what everyone's gonna look like when they meet you in the Wizarding World," his dad told him.

Steve shoved his dad lightly. "Don't be mean," Steve chided, and his dad just stared back like he had no clue what Steve was talking about.

"I'm sorry, sir," Harry told Steve. "I didn't mean to stare."

"And no one but you'd have the courtesy to apologise for the bad behaviour around a celebrity, either," his dad observed. "People  _ will _ stare, but you just ignore it and they'll eventually get used to you, Harry."

"Here's a hint," Steve said, leaning closer, almost conspiratorially. "One thing I learned pretty quickly is that people flatter you, talk up the hero angle, when they want something from you. They might not, but it happens, a lot."

Harry nodded slowly. He thought he understood. Albus sometimes seemed to want something from his dad, and a lot of the time he used nice words to say so.

"Any other questions, Harry?" his dad asked. Harry slowly shook his head. "You know you can always ask me anything. I can't think of a circumstance where I wouldn't answer, but I sure won't lie. So if you think of anything else, you come and ask, okay?"

Harry nodded. He liked the way his dad explained things. It always made a lot more sense than when Albus' friends tried to explain them. The number of times they'd said 'because that's the way it is'... but his dad always actually said  _ why _ that was the way it was.

"So Steve's going to be visiting a lot, in the future," his dad told him. "I think you're gonna like him."

\---


	3. Memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been informed that I should clarify the tags: Apparently the 'Manipulative!Dumbledore' tag is often read to mean evil!Dumbledore and/or Dumbledore-bashing... this is NOT that sort of fic. Dumbledore is manipulative, very much so, but for sincerely good reasons and with sincerely good intentions, I just tagged it that way because frankly he does a lot of manipulating and it seemed to need to be mentioned. I'm a Slytherin, I respect manipulation the way Dumbledore does it in this fic... which is why I'm writing it. 
> 
> Bucky, meanwhile, is paranoid enough to perhaps imagine more malice than is there... and now that I'm running one chapter ahead of what I'm posting, I can say that he will get called out on it.

\---

Bucky had been very busy since adopting Harry. Not merely looking after the boy, which was a little more of a challenge than he'd expected. He'd handled small children before, but it had been about eighty years since he'd been required to do so, even if he'd spent a lot of those years frozen. And none of those children had occasionally manifesting magical powers. He'd risen to the challenge, however, and had focused on fortifying his own position, carefully working to acquire the tools best suited to protect himself from HYDRA. 

Sure, even from the very start he intended to protect Harry too; he wasn't the monster HYDRA had tried to make him, so he couldn't imagine doing anything to endanger a child... and over time he grew to truly love the kid as his own. Still, he wasn't naive enough to expect HYDRA could _never_ figure out a way to find him here. He had seen the progression of their technology during his time with them, and he was sure it was only a matter of time before they noticed the magical world and decided to add it to their to-be-conquered list.

The first thing had been the house - Albus provided it, and as such all of Albus' friends thought they were entitled to show up as they pleased. This was tolerable only because they had clearly been pressured into keeping quiet about Harry's celebrity status, and they all seemed to think Harry was the most valuable person they knew.

With active disapproval from Albus, Bucky got a job in Diagon Alley, stacking shelves in a bookstore. If Albus would provide assistance looking after Harry, then Bucky would take advantage of the free childcare during work hours and go out and try to make a living for the pair of them. This prompted Albus to reluctantly arrange transport for him. One of Albus' own innovations; a variation on a Portkey that could be programmed and reused without recasting the spells on it every time. It required recharging every twelve uses (though it could be topped up more frequently if convenient), but it gave Bucky the freedom to get around without using normal forms of transportation.

Because if push had come to shove, he absolutely would have gone out into the nearby village to look for something to keep him busy while Molly looked after Harry. He knew he would go stir-crazy stuck indoors - even in such a pleasant house - with nothing but memories to occupy him... and given some of the memories he had, that would be especially bad. Albus wisely preempted this by allowing him access to the wider magical world, instead of risking him venturing out into the Muggle world.

The third thing Bucky had done was to buy illusion spells. It wasn't exactly considered proper; you had to go to Knockturn Alley to find them, but jewellery that changed how you appeared was a thing that existed. He got a band for his left arm that made it appear flesh, and a chain to wear around his neck that altered his facial features beyond recognition. He had no reason to hide his real face in the magical world - HYDRA were a Muggle organisation - but it was good to have the chain in case he ever wanted to visit the rest of the world.

When he came back four years later with a very Muggle child-sized baseball cap, and asked the enchanter to make it modify hair colour and hide facial scars, he'd gotten a very weird look, but his money was as good as anyone's, so they'd done it.

Bucky considered himself a very good influence, because Harry Potter was now a Dodgers fan... if only by the fact that he was forced to wear that hat if he wanted to go anywhere in the Wizarding World without being recognised. The boy had rolled his eyes at Bucky's blatant favouritism in the realm of sports... which was hypocritical as hell, coming from the kid who had plastered his entire room in Quidditch posters.

Albus had initially tried to keep Bucky in the dark about the details of the Riddle War - Bucky was _not_ going to dignify it with the title in the books of "He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's War" - claiming it was unnecessary for the job of raising Harry. That hadn't gone too well for Albus, given that Bucky worked in a bookstore, and considered knowing your history to be a damned good way of not repeating it, thank you very much.

He had taken the opportunity of working in said bookstore to research everything he could about the Wizarding World. Magical theory (some of which read like real science, others read like the author hadn't a clue and was wildly guessing), history (usually ancient, but some of it happened in the last century), and worst of all politics.

Apparently, politics could be awful, no matter where you went. HYDRA had used it as one of their favourite weapons, and when the height of political debate in the Wizarding World was, "Do you think Muggles should be allowed to live or not?" … unsurprisingly, Bucky had a fairly strong opinion on that one.

It intrigued him to notice that no one assumed he _wasn't_ a wizard, just because they never saw him use magic, even at his workplace. Most just ignored the detail - or him - entirely. Some assumed he'd flunked out of Hogwarts, a few suggested he was a Squib... and one elderly witch told him, to his face, that she thought it was lovely that he respected the books enough to treat each one personally instead of just using magic on them.

Bucky politely corrected those who suggested he'd failed his magical education (he'd never attempted it, so he couldn't possibly have failed it... not that he told it to them that way) and was somewhat less polite in his denials of being a Squib (well he wasn't!) He did his utmost to be the best shop assistant ever for that nice old witch who came up with the best cover-story ever without even meaning to... but no one considered the fact that his very true statements about not being a dropout or a Squib could possibly mean anything other than that he was in fact a wizard; he found that hilarious.

It probably didn't hurt the general false assumption that he was a wizard, when he used his stealth skills around the bookshop. Achieving high-quality jump-scares, through Muggle means, upon the more unpleasant 'political' types was always satisfying. Within ten minutes of Bucky's first meeting with a particularly highly-strung individual called Lucius Malfoy, the man was convinced there were sound-dampening spells throughout the bookshop, to which the shopkeeper had said indignantly, "There absolutely are not; this isn't a library!"

Malfoy... now that man's name was on a lot of bad things, especially for someone walking free the way he did. If the conspiracy theories were true (and, what with having been one himself, Bucky always at least looked into them before dismissing them), then Lucius was responsible for a kill count during the Riddle War to rival Bucky's own. Total, not just WWII or under HYDRA but _both_. Not all with his own hands, of course. He'd apparently been pretty high up in Riddle's organisation, and he came across as someone who'd prefer to manoeuvre rather than fight - though Bucky was pretty sure he could do that, too - but he was responsible for it all the same.

The theories were, of course, unproven.

About as unproven as Bucky's time with HYDRA... and using the exact same excuse.

Now _that_ had prompted Bucky to learn all he could about Dark Magic.

As it turned out, he was in luck; experience bred resistance to all forms of mind-control, according to the book he'd found on Unforgivable Curses. The Imperius Curse was almost the exact opposite to Bucky's experience - giving the victim a 'blissed out' sensation, where Bucky had been tortured into compliance - but apparently that didn't matter. What mattered was the will to think 'I don't really want to do this' while under duress.

He didn't stop reading there, though. He sometimes thought that the Cruciatus sounded like a fun thing to try on some of his old Handlers, when he was feeling particularly depressed about his past. But then he remembered his current responsibilities, and snapped out of those thoughts fairly quickly.

And the Unforgivables were really only the tip of the iceberg. By the time Harry was ten, Bucky was a veritable expert on the academic theories of many of the Dark Arts. He sincerely believed that the only reason to learn this was to defend against it... but damn did he learn a _lot_ of it.

It was due to this research that he noticed Harry was a 'Parselmouth'. Kid tried to adopt an adder that he'd found in the garden, claiming it told him it was just looking for a warm place to sleep. Bucky's research suggested this was a skill common to dark wizards, but he'd seen literally nothing to suggest it was evil in and of itself, so he'd just told Harry not everyone could talk to snakes, and others would be jealous if they found out he could. He was fairly sure it was true - those real dark wizards out there would be very jealous.

And now the kid had a pet. Bucky had not been prepared for a pet, especially an exotic one. If he had considered pets, he'd probably have picked a dog - he liked dogs.

That had been about two weeks before Steve woke up. The snake was now living in a small terrarium in Harry's bedroom, and by the sound of the one-sided conversations Bucky occasionally overheard, it was entirely too pleased with itself to be there. Harry said its name was 'Silar'... not, mind you, that Harry had named it. No, he claimed the snake had told him its name.

Bucky constantly wondered if Silar would survive the next owl post delivery. No that he felt any real dislike towards the snake - it hadn’t really grabbed his attention or affection, but he'd not yet been called upon to feed it or clean its cage either, so he was basically neutral to it. He just didn't know how interspecies cooperation in magical creatures worked, as he was fairly sure he'd seen the owls explicitly not-killing some other prey-animals before. However, he was still uncomfortable with the prospect of explaining to Harry why Errol might feel like eating Silar.

\---

Ron Weasley's favourite part about being friends with _the_ Harry Potter was not that he was a celebrity - they'd been friends too long for that to really register unless someone else commented on it; Ron couldn't remember _not_ knowing Harry.

It wasn't the fact Harry's dad had a Muggle television, or any of the other weird things some other kids said were great about their friends. Some of Charlie's friends, for example, really liked how the Weasleys had their own - admittedly 'rustic' - back-yard Quidditch pitch. Ron was pretty sure some of the snottier Pureblood kids only had friends because they had cool toys to attract them with.

No, it was the fact that Harry actually paid attention to him, when everyone else was paying attention to one or several of his brothers instead. Harry told Ron stories about his dad and Captain America, and they read the old comics and played 'Howling Commandos' in the garden; Harry had made a game out of degnoming, where the gnomes were evil spies and had to be rooted out. Ron always got to be the Captain - he never got to be the leader in and of his brothers' games, but Harry always wanted to play the Sergeant because that's what his dad was.

The television was still high on the list, though.

Apparently, it had been quite the feat, on Harry's dad's part, to get it to not-explode around all the magic in the house. Ron was under the impression - and Harry's dad might have heavily hinted in this direction - that because televisions could be expensive, he'd had to go to some less than legal sources of money to get replacements during the experimental phase.

"I used to work for some bad people. They might have 'magically' misplaced some funds recently," were the words Ron remembered hearing.

The television got _all_ the Muggle channels, apparently. Harry's dad explained the Muggle sports to them, while watching them. He was apparently very fond of a team called the Los Angeles Dodgers - which was weird, because Ron was sure Harry's dad had said he was from New York. But then both Harry and his dad happily listened when Ron expounded on the virtues of the Chudley Cannons - something his brothers often teased him for liking.

"It's not about if they win or not," Harry had told him. "If it was, there'd be no Cubs fans."

"Cubs?" Ron asked.

Harry turned around and shouted, "Dad, can we watch _Back To The Future?!_ "

And thus, Ron's love of Muggle movies was born.

\---

Secretly, quietly, underneath the shiny veneer of SHIELD collectively losing their minds at losing Captain America, HYDRA were collectively losing their minds at _who the cameras had recorded abducting Captain America._

Naturally, they'd deleted that footage, to keep their secrets. But this was literally the first time in a decade that they'd picked up the Asset's trail. They had started to think he was dead. All they knew was that one of their storage facilities had gone dark, and when they'd gotten there they had found six very confused agents who insisted the last thing they remembered was going about their normal routine - and stories checked out to the minute, they were all missing the exact same amount of time - and the Asset was simply absent.

No leads whatsoever, not even the tracking device that had been in his arm... which they had found sitting neatly on one of the surgical tables in the storage facility, with no signs of any damage.

Then, suddenly, ten years later they see him abducting Captain America in the middle of a crowded street... and apparently _teleporting_. It was downright suspicious how no one in the street had been looking his way when it had happened, when they had all been goggling at the spectacle the good Captain was providing moments before.

One smartass in the office has suggested it was a 'somebody else's problem field' - an entirely fictional concept, but at this stage it was the best they had to go on.

Of course, all they actually had was one brief glimpse. It wasn't really a trail, so much as a fairly damned obvious association. Those high up enough to know about this were also high up enough to know _who_ they Asset had once been... and by the looks of it was trying to be again.

Now they knew that the Asset was alive, and he was _up to something._ Something involving his old friend, and very likely to HYDRA's detriment.

Now, Agent Jasper Sitwell was loitering in the lobby of New York's SHIELD base, when he blinked, and all of a sudden, Captain America was walking towards him. Well, more likely he was walking in the general direction of the building, but Jasper was in said building, so that's how he saw it. He hadn't been exactly focused on the streets outside, but he had been looking exactly in the direction the Captain had appeared, and surely he wouldn't have missed him getting this close?

Jasper shook his head to dismiss his own confusion, and rushed out to greet the Captain, along with several other SHIELD agents.

It was an absolute steaming pile of bullshit that the Captain offered in response to their clamour for answers. He'd gotten spooked and run off. Got lost in the city and started recognising places. Came back when he realised the truth that he was in the future. Oh, Jasper believed every word was true, but it was phrased in a manner to allay suspicion and direct assumptions.

Jasper had seen the footage; he knew there was so much more going on here. If he hadn't, he might have fallen for it. The Captain was good at misrepresenting the truth. _Very good._ They'd have to watch that.

The earnest, innocent act carried the Captain - with Jasper and Agent Sharon Carter tagging along - all the way into a meeting with Director Fury. A basic debriefing, where Fury revealed far more than the Captain did. Mostly general public knowledge, but a few tidbits about SHIELD's official history got thrown in. Fury was just as good at leading impressions as the Captain seemed to be, and soon the two were at an agreement that the Captain would stick around and learn about this new century from SHIELD.

Jasper swiftly volunteered some of his people to help. HYDRA's top psychologist on SHIELD's payroll would be happy to 'evaluate' the Captain's adjustment to the modern era. STRIKE Alpha, being the best of the best, would be ideal for him to begin training with once he was cleared for it.

Fury didn't even bat an eye, agreeing readily.

Soon HYDRA would know what was going on, and figure out what move to make next.

\---

It was surreal enough to see New York changed by nearly seven decades of technological progress. It was doubly surreal to know Bucky was out there - apparently in Scotland of all places - using _magic_ to hide from the world. Sure, he seemed happy to have Harry, but Steve wondered about HYDRA.

Bucky had instilled exactly the right level of paranoia in Steve to not mention anything he'd said at all. To pretend he knew nothing. He'd asked about HYDRA, but in the context of wondering what happened after he'd defeated the Red Skull, rather than admitting he knew they were still out there.

Fury claimed they were gone for good.

It was impossible to be sure if that was a lie or not. Fury was the head of an international spy organisation, it would be very hard to hide anything from him, but not impossible. On the other hand, it would be very easy for him to lie, but equally, that didn't mean that he necessarily would. Not about that, anyway.

Bucky had given him an enchanted ring, which Steve now wore on his right index finger. It was invisible unless you knew to look - and if you knew to look it was still pretty innocuous - and so long as he wore it Bucky would know both where he was and if he was safe. Apparently, it magically read both the 'energy' around him, and his stress-hormone levels. If either one registered a threat - the 'energy' through some ability to read the feelings of others, the hormones by elevated levels in Steve's blood - then a signal would be sent to Bucky.

Bucky had also shown Steve how the 'scrying spell' worked. That all he needed to do was know what he was looking for and he'd see it, like television except very literally in a magic crystal ball. It required him to know his target very well. Just knowing the name or having once visited the place wasn’t anywhere near close to enough. Bucky had apparently tried and failed to track his HYDRA captors this way, with hopes of revealing them to the authorities (or at least, Steve hoped he'd have revealed them to the authorities, but the gleam in Bucky's eye had suggested that he had something far less pleasant in mind), but he hadn't known them well enough.

Steve, on the other hand, he knew very well.

Steve felt the hairs on his neck stand on end, as though someone were watching him, and wondered briefly if that was just paranoia or because Bucky actually _was_ watching him. He remained too paranoid to speak aloud about it, just in case someone _else_ was watching. Bucky had told him all about the advancements HYDRA had made in surveillance technology (many of which were downright horrifying) and how much harder they were to spot these days.

Watched or not, he was alone in a small apartment SHIELD had given him. He was armed only with the ring from Bucky, and a new laptop computer from SHIELD. After a few moments' internal debate, he decided that - having only been awake for approximately six hours in the last sixty-five years - he shouldn't even consider rest or sleep yet, even if it was a bit late right now.

Instead, he opened the laptop, and followed the basic instructions the SHIELD agent who had given it to him had offered. It wasn't exactly rocket science. Press the 'ON' button. Wait for it to load, open the 'browser' and type whatever he wanted to know in the black space at the top.

He understood this better than the 'magic' Bucky had gone on about. Bucky tried to treat the magic like science, but a lot of the time he still shrugged and grumbled, "Nobody admits to knowing how it works, really." With computers, they'd explained it a bit better. Most of the information humanity had accrued had been copied into a huge repository that any computer could access, you just had to ask it the right questions.

He started with, "How did World War 2 end?", found something called 'Wikipedia' at the top of the answers, and decided to go from there. He learned quickly that those little bits of text in blue led to more details, and followed those to read what people thought about his own part in the war.

He was a little bit surprised to find no mention of HYDRA, whatsoever, only allusions to classified missions. The radio plays and comics made up a lot of the villains they wrote him fighting against, but called them all Nazis, rather than identifying them as HYDRA specifically. There were several named characters, filling traditional over-the-top villain roles, and two or three of them even had a few traits resembling the Red Skull, but none of them were entirely accurate. The comics had initially outright omitted both Gabe Jones and Jim Morita from the Howling Commandos, before including them as downright insulting caricatures, and made Bucky a kid-sidekick instead of his brother-in-all-but-blood. The latter, apparently, had been done with the intention of conveniently rivalling a certain other comic series of the time, about a man who fought crime dressed up as a bat. They had also made up a whole epic love story between him and Peggy Carter, which made him half annoyed, half embarrassed, and frankly, somewhat wistful. He wished that they'd had an epic love story, he was acutely aware that they could have done, if he'd just had the courage to tell her how he felt. In the end, though, the most they had shared was some light flirting, a dramatic kiss goodbye, and a final conversation, full of could-have-beens and never-weres, that hurt too much to think about. Steve _did_ still feel that sort of affection for her, but he had never had the courage to approach her that way.

Even his supposed 'death', while read as a heroic martyrdom, didn't explain what specific great threat he'd taken down with him, beyond vague explanations about a Nazi super-weapon aimed at the East Coast - which was technically true, if you ignored the fact that HYDRA had split off from the Nazis, but very light on the details. The comics had actually been pretty close to the full truth, but several details were still either omitted or outright wrong.

He knew SHIELD had far more information on this subject; they seemed to know what really happened. Apparently, the general public didn't.

That, combined with Bucky's paranoia about the organisation on general principle, really made him wonder just how much they were actually telling him.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If anyone is fixated on timelines, the way I am... my headcanon is time that Steve woke up on July 4th 2011 (someone at SHIELD having considered the date significant enough to put in the extra work to meet it), with Fury's Big Week in April of the same year. In this fic, Harry turns 11 on July 31st 2011... and I'm sure from there you can draw some patterns.


	4. History

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to my assistant writer, editor, and nightmare fuel shoveller, [Nimbus Llewelyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NimbusLlewelyn/pseuds/NimbusLlewelyn), who is responsible for large chunks of Dumbledore's dialogue in this chapter.

\---

The second time Bucky ambushed Steve was in Central Park. Steve had gone out for an early morning run, and just as he reached a secluded spot the music from his phone stopped and the phone itself exploded with sparks in his pocket.

At the same time, several other much smaller sparks erupted from the collar of his jacket, the earbuds he'd been listening to the music through, his wristwatch, his backpack, the wallet he kept in the pocket of his shorts, and the soles of his shoes.

Steve was understandably startled, and yelped, ripping out the earbuds and dropping the phone.

Bucky appeared next to him, grinning. "I could get in trouble for that, but I think I proved my point."

Steve stared at him, suspicion forming at just what had happened. "Get in trouble for what?"

Bucky just grinned, grabbed Steve's arm, and said, "Bananas suck now."

They teleported. Once was weird, twice was a pattern, and Steve jumped to the perfectly reasonable conclusion that 'bananas suck now' was some sort of activation code for the 'Portkey' device Bucky used.

The teleportation itself felt just as uncomfortable as last time, but Steve didn't lose his footing the same way this time, and just gave Bucky a narrow-eyed look. "What did you do, Buck?"

"See this-" Bucky held up a small black disc with a silver arrow on it, so Steve could clearly see it. "It's a highly illegal magical device called a 'Muggle-zapper'. It shorts out whatever electronic device you point it at... which, in the Wizarding World, is classified as 'Muggle-baiting', and punishable by a fine that looks to me to have been carefully calculated so that a very specific group of rich assholes can comfortably afford it."

Steve knew that 'Muggle' was the word the wizards used for non-magical people - like Bucky and Steve themselves - but he hadn't realised there were laws about it. Specifically, by the sound of it, laws that were designed to look well meaning, but not really solve the problems of prejudice. So what else was new?

"And you used it on my brand new phone, why?" Steve asked dubiously.

Bucky turned the 'Muggle-zapper' over, and revealed a number on the back. It said '16'. "This is like a scorecard or something; tells me how many devices it's shorted out. Minus the phone and earbuds, that's fourteen surveillance bugs I disarmed on your person."

Steve's eyes widened in shock. "Fourteen?!" he asked, stunned.

"They probably had your phone tracked, too. And any computers they let you use," Bucky added with a shrug. "This is standard spy-organisation procedure; they all do it. Fourteen's a bit much - probably because you gave them the slip before - but they're all disabled now."

"And why didn't you do this the first time?" Steve asked, rubbing the back of his neck where the spark from his collar had grazed. He'd been wearing SHIELD-issue clothes then, too.

"There's wards around the house; no unauthorised signals in or out," Bucky explained, "We may be in a magical part of London right now, but the wards here aren't quite up to my standards."

Steve took the opportunity to properly take in their surroundings. It was a quiet little room, which looked like it might have been part of a bar or the like. Aside from himself and Bucky, it was empty, so he hadn't really paid attention. Now, Bucky started leading him out into the main part of - yeah, it was definitely a bar. Or, since this was England, a pub. He recalled Peggy and Falsworth being very particular about that, though he'd never quite understood why.

Steve had spent his first two weeks in the future learning not to gape at 'everyday' things, and that was the only reason he managed to maintain a straight face at the open displays of magic around the pub.

The barkeep didn't carry the trays of drinks to the patrons; he levitated them across the room, standing behind the bar and directing the trays like a conductor leading a band, with what Steve supposed must be an actual magic wand. A couple of young teens sat at a nearby table, playing a game of chess where they told the pieces were to go and the pieces marched obediently across the board on their own.

A man was reading a newspaper called the  _ Daily Prophet _ , on which the photographs moved, while stirring his tea with a wave of his hand, the spoon following his directions without him actually touching it. The woman next to him was eating a sandwich with both hands, but her glossy magazine hovered, open, in front of her so she could read it easily.

Steve would swear he saw a small creature fluttering about in the rafters; it looked humanoid, jet black, with shiny gossamer wings and eerie large black eyes.

Bucky guided Steve through the pub as if he knew the place well, even going so far as to nod politely, and mutter, "Tom," to the barkeep and earning a similar gesture in return. 'Tom' used Bucky's real name - 'James' - to address him.

Before Steve could wonder at that, they were already out the back door, and Bucky tapped out a pattern on the bricks on the blank wall with his left hand... and when he was done, the wall seemed to fold back in on itself to reveal an even more stunning magical scene before them. The winding alleyway was cobbled, and lined with shops even Steve would think looked old-fashioned, emblazoned with names like ' _ Eeylops Owl Emporium _ ' and ' _ Quality Quidditch Supplies _ '.

Bucky continued to lead the way, like this was perfectly normal for him, though as they walked Steve noticed Bucky did not let go of his grip on Steve's arm. "So, where are we going?" Steve asked, carefully choosing not to use his name; Bucky could be paranoid before, but since this whole thing with HYDRA he had taken it so much farther. Perhaps everyone here actually thought he preferred to be called 'James'?

"We're going to the Ministry of Magic... which is in a whole other part of the city, but there's a door to it down the street, as well."

"Right..." Steve muttered, surprised at just how casually Bucky had declared that impossible thing as fact. "And you're dragging me along because...?" he prodded.

Bucky snorted, pausing in his determined trek to turn, pull them both into a quiet alcove, and actually speak to Steve. "You remember when we were ten, and we did that stupid 'blood brothers' thing?"

"Yeah..." Steve said, wondering where this was going. It had been almost a joke at the time, however true the intent was. They'd both got hurt in a fight Steve had started, both bleeding from their right hands, and it had been Steve's own idea to do it. Neither of them thought the actual act was anything important - they hadn't really needed some ritual to feel like brothers anyway; only children put serious stock in that sort of thing. He had at the time, but now in hindsight it seemed ridiculous.

"Well, turns out in the magical world, it can be made legally binding. There's a set of rituals called 'blood adoptions'; I'm about to make a certain old man very annoyed with me, but there's nothing he can do, because it's already eighty-odd years too late."

"Bucky..." Steve said, in a warning tone.

"Look, first chance he thinks he can get away with it, Albus or one of his people will want to either wipe your memories of the whole magical world or find some way of binding you to prevent you revealing it, particularly anything to do with Harry. It's a miracle he tolerated me telling you in the first place. I complete this blood ritual with you, then you're legally my brother, and he can't touch you."

Steve gaped.

“It's not that he's anti-Muggle," Bucky explained. "He's actually one of the most enlightened on that score - not that that's exactly hard. It's not anything personal, either. It's just that he's exactly as paranoid as me and you're an extra mouth that he might think can be made to talk. If I was in his position, I'd be considering contingency measures too. The Wizarding World doesn't care much for the rights of individual Muggles; if you can't remember to accuse them of the crime, is it really a crime? Not really, by their laws. But a memory charm is still a crime, if it affects someone who they consider part of their world. As the legal parent of a wizard, I'd have been safe anyway, but Albus went further, making me an official citizen of the Wizarding World, not just a 'Muggle affiliate'... so if I make you my 'brother', then by being the sibling of a citizen, you're protected from the stupid Statute of Secrecy, too. It's ridiculously complicated and completely prejudiced, but the loophole exists so I'm gonna use it."

After a long moment to think about that, Steve shook his head. "I don't know, Bucky. What makes you think, if he's as manipulative as you say, that he didn't actually  _ want _ you to do this?"

Bucky startled. "What?"

"Well, think about it," Steve said, "He must know you know about these blood rituals, right? And you made it pretty clear that he knew how you felt about me."

"Yeah..."

"So why would he even let you tell me about magic, if he didn't want me to know? Why bother making you a citizen of the magical world, if you'd be safe just being Harry's guardian, unless he really wanted to bring me in on it, too? It'd be a lot more trouble to come up with an excuse to make me forget than to just not let me know in the first place."

Bucky frowned thoughtfully, but then slowly, reluctantly, he nodded. "You could be right." His lip twitched in the direction of an almost sadistic smirk for an instant. "I can think of a few other people who'd be  _ very _ unhappy if you were legally protected like that, and them being unhappy might entertain Albus... a  _ lot _ ."

"Now why might it be in Albus' interests for me to know?" Steve asked. "Annoying powerful people, while I can see the appeal, can't be all of it."

Bucky grinned at that, but then seemed to think for a moment. Finally he shook his head. "You make a good argument, Steve, but other than your track record with noseless villains, I can't think of anything off the top of my head." He considered. "Maybe a back-up guardian for Harry? Or maybe he thinks you'll be a softer touch. Or maybe he's being nice as well as practical and saving me and him some trouble down the line." 

Steve shrugged. "So what've I gotta do for this blood ritual?"

"Well, since the blood bit's already done, they'd just need to cast a basic scanning spell on you to confirm it, in the presence of Ministry witnesses, then there's some ritual words to define the type of bond - not even proper magic words, just a magically enforced declaration of intent - and then on paper you're officially my brother."

Steve nodded. "Okay, I'm in."

\---

Mildred Jones worked in the Department of Muggle Relations at the Ministry of Magic. She was personally responsible for keeping a thorough record of which Muggles knew about Magic at any given time.

It wasn't usually in her purview to oversee blood adoptions, but that was mostly because they were outdated and considered really quite dangerous (blood contagions, for example... not to mention that some of the rituals outright gave control to one party over the other). In fact, it had been officially illegal to initiate a blood adoption since 1981. Not that it stopped  _ some _ people.

The communication she had received on the subject was, well, unusual. First, it had a very particular brand of enchantment on it, one that some of the muggles she'd encountered in her line of work had referred to as an 'NDA' attached - if she chose to read the letter, she was magically bound not to repeat its contents to any not involved. She had accepted those before, and thought little of it until she read the letter itself.

Apparently, the participants of the blood adoption she was being asked to oversee were the famous Captain America; hero of WWII, and his best friend James Barnes. The letter clarified that the blood component had been done mostly as a joke by the pair when they had been young and naive; something many Muggles used to do, apparently. Now, they wished to cement the magical component of the bond, as brothers.

Mildred had considered rejecting the request outright - she had every right to do so, but something stayed her hand. The pair were both Muggles, but somehow Mr Barnes was on record as a citizen of the Wizarding World for the last decade. This was why they had chosen her, when the department that used to deal with blood magic was long closed down - because this  _ did _ qualify as Muggle Relations. Literally, if she accepted their request.

She had been quiet about requisitioning the old scrolls on blood adoptions, claiming she was dealing with an existing case, and not clarifying who was involved - after all, she was magically bound  _ not _ to share such details. Technically, as the blood component was completed already, she really  _ was _ dealing with an old case.

Now, the pair entered her office at the Ministry, and took their designated seats on the far side of her desk. She spread out the scroll for 'Blood Brothers', so that they could read it. "As this is no longer an official service the Ministry provides, I can't exactly charge you the usual fee for it, which would have been seven Galleons. Instead, I'll charge my standard consultation fee of thirty sickles an hour. This shouldn't take the full hour."

Barnes nodded, while Rogers gave him a questioning look.

"That sounds reasonable," Barnes answered, clearly not only accepting the terms, but also to allay his friend's confusion with the currency.

"If I may ask," she said, trying to conceal her uncertainty. "You never said in your letter exactly  _ why _ you wanted to do this?"

"Well, there's two possible reasons," Barnes said, in a tone that suggested he may or may not be joking. "Either someone thinks it's funny to threaten my closest friend, and I'd like to prove them very wrong... or the fate of the world depends on it."

"Threats?" Mildred asked, curiously.

"Let's just say I'm averse to the general concept of memory charms," Barnes answered, somewhat cryptically. Certainly, memory charms could be considered cruel or unfair by some people, but few developed active aversion to it without first-hand experience.

"Given that I'm under a magically enforced non-disclosure agreement, and thus couldn't tell anyone if I wanted, would I be allowed to ask how it is that the two of you appear not to have aged a day in the last seventy years?"

"Seventy?" Rogers asked, turning to his friend. "She's flattering us." Barnes chuckled, but the entire exchange seemed in good humour.

"I'm sure it'll be announced by the Muggles eventually, how they found Captain America frozen in the arctic," Barnes explained casually. "Can't keep that face hidden from the media forever, can they?"

"Now  _ that _ probably  _ wasn't _ a compliment," Rogers commented, in a teasing tone.

"I'm afraid you don't get to know about me; some people talk even with magic trying to stop them... just ask the Potters."

Mildred blanched at that. Most of the ministry had been aware of Sirius Black's sentencing for betraying a Secret Keeper spell and murdering a dozen Muggles. She certainly didn't want to comment after that.

So instead, she cleared her throat. "Very well, then. I just need to cast a basic scanning spell to confirm the blood element is complete; we won't be able to proceed if it isn't, as it is illegal to  _ initiate _ a blood bond, since the early nineteen-eighties. Then I'll need both of you - together, if you can - to read out the words in red on this scroll. That'll be that, as they say."

Both men nodded, and so Mildred got to work.

\---

The second time SHIELD lost track of Captain America, Director Fury only barely restrained himself from knocking the messenger out cold. The facts that it wasn't the poor sap's fault - they'd probably pissed off their supervisor something fierce to be sent as the sacrificial lamb - and that employment tribunals were hell, even for SHIELD, had stayed his hand. Barely.

"This is ridiculous!" he declared, once he and Hill were alone. "There has got to be someone interfering, there's no way he could have found all our tracking devices on his own."

Hill shook her head, "I authorised a dozen trackers, plus the usual taps on phone and internet usage. So far as all indications showed, he just went out for a run in the park - same as he does every morning since waking up this century - and simply vanished. He appeared to be passing through a secluded location, with no cameras or witnesses, when all signals ceased at the same time, including his phone. Only the laptop remains, and that's likely because it wasn't on his person." Hill paused for a moment, before asking, "We've been dealing with hard to explain circumstances since April; are we certain the Bifrost wasn't involved?"

Fury eyed her. He only had one eye, but that simply concentrated the effect. "Tell me, Agent Hill, has anyone reported a giant spear of rainbow light and a giant pseudo-Norse burn mark where he was last seen?" he asked pointedly.

They both knew that that wasn't the case. For one thing, Captain America lived in New York, home of the smartphone obsessed and incorrigibly curious. If someone didn't catch the Bifrost itself, they'd certainly have gone to have a look - and no doubt taken many selfies with the burn marks.

“No, sir,” Hill said, a little abashed. "Other forms of teleportation, then?" she said thoughtfully. "Is it possible that Project Pegasus-"

"It's possible, but unlikely," Fury cut her off. Yes, their analysis of the Tesseract did indicate that it could be used as more than merely an energy source. Energy like that didn't come from nowhere, it was drawn through from somewhere else, or so the scientists claimed. They also claimed it had the power to convert matter to and from energy, if it were harnessed correctly. Star Trek grade shit.

"If he came into contact with it, before..." this time, she trailed off to let him draw his own conclusions, or possibly assumed he would interrupt again. Fury understood she meant before the plane crashed. Before Stark found it in the ocean.

Before...  _ her _ .

"I think," he said, measured as he could; he remembered the way she had  _ glowed, _ there was no evidence of that in the more remote surveillance of the park. "If it could affect a person like that, it might be more distinctive, too."

Oh damn, that look Hill was giving him said she got his meaning a bit too well. He'd have to take steps to clear her for catsitting duty, after this conversation.

"Well, then, perhaps we need more direct surveillance?" she suggested. "I'd recommend Barton."

Not only was Romanoff - their best spy - elsewhere on mission, but Barton did tend to do well with longer-range surveillance. He could be planted at a building with sightlines for both the Captain's apartment and the park, less risk of being spotted if he doesn't have to commute.

"Good call," he admitted. "Get on it." Hill nodded, preparing to leave now, when he added, "Oh, and Agent Hill?"

"Yes, sir?"

"I've got a new assignment for you, once you're done setting up Barton. Off-record safehouse six, I'll see you there." Hill nodded again, looking conflicted. Evidently, she wasn't sure if this was very good news, or very bad... so Fury decided to ease the tension slightly. "I hope you're not allergic to cats."

\---

"There is something many people conveniently forget about Gellert Grindelwald," Albus said, as he took a seat next to Steve Rogers, at the small kitchen table in Mr Barnes' home.

Steve gave him a suspicious sideways look. It was clear he knew who Albus was, and had heard most of that from Mr Barnes, most likely. "He's the wizard who was involved in World War Two, wasn't he?"

"He was the leader of those witches and wizards, considered by history to be in the wrong, during that time, yes," Albus clarified. The look on Steve's face demanded he continue his explanation, and thus he did. "He was not a Pureblood supremacist, as many of Lord Voldemort's followers would come to be. He never considered  _ all _ Muggles to be evil, he simply knew that some were... and as I'm sure you understand - given your own experiences with those who would seek power for their own sake - that is enough to be wary of."

Steve frowned, and nodded.

Albus continued. "Grindelwald was a very gifted wizard in many respects. One of his rarer talents was that he was a powerful Seer. He had a vision - a premonition - of what we now know to be the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki." Here Albus paused, to ensure he saw recognition in Steve's eyes, and indeed he did. "He believed that the Muggle warmongers would not stop at what he witnessed, that they would destroy the entire world rather than cease their hostilities. He believed he needed to infiltrate and defeat from within those who would attempt such."

Albus sighed deeply. "Unfortunately, as is often the case, his methods did not match his intentions. He almost tore the wizarding world apart, between those who would maintain our secrecy and those who would wish to show themselves and stop the foretold destruction before it came to pass. Our own war then was mostly internal, but Grindelwald did attack Muggles of all three sides of the greater war, as well. Using magic to harm a Muggle was enough of a crime in and of itself for history to write itself from there."

"Three?" Steve asked, dubiously.

"As I understood it at the time - and as wizarding history tells it - there were the Allies, the Axis, and HYDRA. HYDRA may have had a convenient relationship with the Axis initially, but they clearly had their own aspirations outside the Nazi regime."

Steve nodded. It seemed, while he was well aware of HYDRA, he had not expected Albus to know of them.

"HYDRA, as I'm sure you have by now guessed, used magic in their work," Albus continued. "It was in part Grindelwald's fault that they knew where to look, though he did try to stop them once he realised his mistake. The cube HYDRA used as a power source was once the property of powerful magical beings, who entrusted it's care to a small wizarding village over a thousand years ago. Magical elements were used in the creation of your own 'super soldier serum', as well. Mr Erskine was a Squib; the son of a wizard with no innate magic of his own. While he had no powers of his own, his knowledge of magic, particularly alchemy, and scientific genius led to his development of the serum that runs through your veins. As I am sure you know, he was captured and coerced into working for Mr Schmidt as a result. There is documentation you may wish to read of his mother's quest for vengeance upon HYDRA, though in the end she was arrested as yet another 'anti-Muggle activist' of the time."

Steve seemed to mull this over for some time, before finally speaking. "Let me guess, you're telling me this to try to prevent me from judging in advance people who might just be misguided?" He looked up and met Albus' eyes with a gaze so intense it was almost overpowering. "Like you think something big is going to happen, and you want me not only on-side, but understanding your motives for doing questionable things in the name of the greater good?"

Albus barely restrained the flinch and reflexive shame he felt at those words. There was no way Captain Rogers could know, truly know, what those words... what those words meant to him. Though perhaps he had heard the words before. The slogan had not been unique to Grindelwald, or the magical world. With those three words, you could justify almost anything.

"The greater good is rarely an excuse," he said eventually. "And even then, it is a poor one; a necessary evil is still an evil. But... it is often a motive."

Steve tilted his head to one side, and his steady gaze showed Albus that something very obviously clicked in his mind, though the details would only have been clear had he actively attempted Legilimency. "Riddle isn't dead, is he? That's the only thing that makes sense of all of this."

How he came to that conclusion, Albus was uncertain, though there were details he knew to be available should Mr Barnes choose to share, so perhaps he acquired all the pieces to that puzzle more swiftly than Albus anticipated.

Or perhaps he made the leap on pure logic. That would be impressive, but considering his documented tactical ability, perhaps not entirely surprising.

Regardless of how he reached the conclusion, he was correct, and Albus acknowledged it with a nod. "I believe that he is, yes. Greatly weakened, and barely alive, stripped of all but the very meanest of his powers… but alive nevertheless. He is deeply knowledgeable about many forms of magic, especially those that might offer him some chance of restoration. He is also utterly devoid of scruples, extremely resourceful, and very cunning. He is not by any means the tactician that history has shown you to be, and he has a tendency to use magic as a crutch. But when he is forced into a corner and denied any other option, then... then, he is truly dangerous."

"He actually has to think about what he's doing," Steve said, nodding his understanding. "Kind of like Schmidt. He was sharp as a tack in the beginning, if you ignored the fact that he was crazy, but the more powerful he got, the less coherent his plans were."

"Power, or the perception of power, blinds as easily as it corrupts," Albus observed. "You are, I believe, an exception to that rule." 

Steve smiled slightly, shooting a surprisingly cynical look his way. Most would have found that a little irritating, and certainly expected a wizard of Albus' eminence to do so. However, Albus had to admit that it was actually somewhat gratifying.

Over the years, Albus had grown accustomed to his judgement being trusted implicitly by those around him, which certainly could feel convenient; one of his flaws, he knew, was a dislike for explaining himself to others, especially when they had a hard time understanding, much less keeping up. As much as it shamed him to admit it, he found doing so rather tedious. Age had given him patience, for the most part, and reputation had given him sufficient trust to avoid that patience being tested. 

Yet that same unswerving trust... it discomforted him. It discomforted him deeply. He knew very well that, as Steve's look was implying, he was decidedly not immune to the corruption of power. It was why he avoided it like the plague. And that trust others placed in him gave him the kind of power that he couldn't simply evade so easily as turning down the position of Minister of Magic.

Yet James Barnes - and, it seemed, Steve Rogers - held him in a certain suspicion. 'Trust, but verify', as a Muggle phrase had it. Even Harry, relatively trusting as he was, still took his word with a pinch of salt, which led him to suspect that James, the common factor, was behind that attitude. At times, he found it frustrating. But for the most part, he actually found it refreshing. Needing to justify himself, to work with those who distrusted him, and often for good reason... it helped to keep him grounded. It helped remind him that while he was far more intelligent than most, his mistakes were correspondingly far greater. For that alone, he would take a little frustration any day.

"I am not simply attempting to butter you up, Steven," he continued. "I have known a great many powerful wizards, and if I may be a little immodest, I am one of the most powerful of them all - for now, anyway. Power affects us all differently, and not always positively. Quite often the opposite, in fact." He regarded Steve. "You have seen our society, and doubtless heard a great deal about its faults from James. I would dispute only a few of them. Those flaws almost invariably have their root in the very deeply buried and insidious belief that our power makes us somehow wiser than our non-magical brethren. Many of the best witches and wizards I have known stumble over this instinctive prejudice, without even realising it is there - why, they would be horrified at the very thought. Yet, there it is. Even many Muggle-born witches and wizards soon start to drift away from their non-magical families. Part of that is due to differing experiences, but part of it... part of it is that they feel that they have been made part of a higher breed. They would never express it so, or even think it, with very few exceptions. But I have been teaching young witches and wizards for more than half a century, Steven, and I have learned to recognise the signs."

He sighed. "I am not immune, either," he continued. "I am sure that James has also informed you of many of my flaws - no, do not be embarrassed. He has reason to be aware of them, as I do his. And I am both old enough and self-aware enough to acknowledge that again, in many cases he is right." He focused on Steve again. "You on, the other hand, by all accounts defy the trend. What was it that James once reported you saying? Ah yes: 'I'm just a boy from Brooklyn'."

Steve flushed. "Well, I am," he said.

"You are enhanced to the very peak of human potential in body and mind, apparently ageless and seemingly unkillable," Albus said dryly. "And yet you still claim to be 'just a boy from Brooklyn'. While I do not know you all that well as of yet - though I hope to someday know you better - I think that that is rather indicative. Some would say of foolishness, or if they were feeling malicious, false humility. I, on the other hand, think that it indicates that Erskine chose very well indeed: no matter what in you was changed, how you were transformed, at heart you remained the same person you always were. Your power changed what you  _ could  _ do, but it did not change what you  _ would  _ do."

"That’s a lot of words to say that you like my style," Steve said mildly.

"Perhaps," Albus said, amused. "Forgive me, I have grown rather fond of the sound of my own voice over the years." His expression hardened. "It is also saying something else. It says that I believe, given Mr Barnes' involvement in Harry's life, that you would be a very valuable ally to have should my suspicions regarding Riddle be proven correct."

"What about HYDRA?" Steve asked sharply. "They're still out there, they were the ones who had Bucky before you went looking for him."

Albus nodded grimly. "Which is another reason I consider you a valuable ally," he said. "James is well able to take care of both Harry and himself, but he is no more perfect than the rest of us, and HYDRA will want him back. They will also want Harry, either as leverage, or for his abilities. My contacts in the Muggle world are relatively limited, and none have either your experience with HYDRA or your capabilities. Given the wizarding world's non-interference policies, it is difficult for us to track Muggle espionage organisations. You, on the other hand, are under no such restraints."

"And if you happened to give me some hints...?" Steve asked slyly.

Albus smiled faintly. "As I understand it, there would be no particular legal ramifications in my telling you-" he said, pulling a small piece of parchment from his pocket, "-the last time I saw evidence of HYDRA was in this location." He handed the parchment over to Steve. "That was, you understand, ten years ago. However, some...  _ traces _ ... are harder to remove than others. I believe you may find something, should you start there."

\---


	5. Threat

\---

The morning of Harry Potter's eleventh birthday was bright, clear, and sunny, if somewhat cold for July. Harry woke with the dawn, as if it was Christmas, and raced through his morning routine, before barrelling out of his room... only to stop dead when he saw the door to his dad's room was ajar.

His dad was up, dressed and looked ready for the day, except he was staring, motionless, into the foe glass he kept next to the more mundane mirror.

Harry slowly, broadcasting his approach with loud footsteps, entered the room and peered into the foe glass. He saw the same lone, distant, indistinct form he always did. It was no closer nor more active than ever.

"Dad?" he asked warily.

"Magic mirrors don't show the same thing for everyone," his dad said, glancing down at Harry for an instant, before resuming his vigil. "I see movement."

"Aaaand... movement in a foe glass means...?" Harry asked. He was sure he'd been told, but he couldn't remember right now. He'd never really thought it was all that important before.

"It means my enemies are active, in a way that connects to me somehow," his dad explained, frowning at the mirror. "It's been a long time since I've seen them move."

Harry cast his gaze back to the lone figure in the distance of his vision in the foe glass. It was perfectly still, other than the mist that always swirled to obscure it. "Mine's not moving."

"That's good, but it's still strange you even see  _ anything _ in this mirror," his dad pointed out. "No ten-year-old's supposed to have that sort of enemy. We're not talking about just someone who dislikes you, we're talking about someone who truly means you harm."

Harry frowned at that. "Like Riddle?"

"He's supposed to be dead."

Harry looked up at his dad, defiant. "So are you."

His dad snorted. "True, and I worked very hard to convince my enemies of that." His amusement faded as suddenly as it had appeared, replaced by a grim frown. "Seems I slipped up."

Well, that was foreboding. Harry shook his head, and tried not to think about it.

Especially when his dad seemed to snap out of it as well, and declared, "Hey, isn't this your birthday? You need presents!"

\---

Bucky had planned Harry's eleventh birthday to the last detail. This was the day he would get his Hogwarts letter at breakfast, and he had planned to take Harry and the Weasley boys (those of school age, at least) out to London for the whole day.

First would be their school shopping, including sneaking plenty of extracurricular purchases while Molly wasn't around to stop him. She was very firm on the subject of charity, and it was a position he both understood and respected - he'd grown up with as little as the Weasleys, a great deal less, at times. Even still, though, he'd loosened up enough to have no problems spoiling Harry and the boys.

Then, Bucky would put on his illusion chain to hide his identity, and take the boys out into the Muggle city, where they would catch a movie and eat at a fast food joint. This was a rare occasion: Bucky rarely ventured out into the Muggle world these days, for fear of being spotted. He only barely trusted the illusion charms to be enough.

The Weasleys' only experience of Muggle things was the fact that Ron went to primary school with Harry. Bucky, Arthur and Molly had agreed that, while the rest of the Weasley kids had been homeschooled, a shared school experience for the pair of best friends really shouldn't be restricted to Hogwarts. It had been Bucky's suggestion, but Arthur had loved the idea of his son learning about Muggles so directly, and Molly, with a small child in Ginny, and the Twins causing mayhem, had been mildly relieved for the extra free time. So, they'd agreed to it, on the condition that Molly - the responsible one who was neither hunted by Muggles nor likely to say something stupid to them - did the school run each day.

Still, the primary school the boys went to was in a small village in Scotland, well out of the way from most normal Muggle hotspots. They didn't get fast food there, and the local cinema wasn't all that great really, even by Bucky's 1940s standards.

A trip into Muggle London was a special occasion for all of them.

Bucky  _ had _ invited Steve to join them for the afternoon - by which time it would be a reasonable hour to be awake in America - but Steve had an appointment with some SHIELD therapist or something, so he'd politely declined.

Which really was a crying shame, given Bucky's choice of movie.

\---

First there had been cake for breakfast, with half the Weasley family singing Happy Birthday over it, and all. Then they'd all gone to Diagon Alley, where Harry so rarely got to go.

Being famous was a decent enough excuse for keeping him away from people who might mob him for being famous, he supposed... but he kind of wished he'd figured out that was  _ why, _ sooner. He'd kind of got the feeling that someone was keeping something from him, and now he knew it made everything make so much more sense.

So he wore the baseball cap, which magically hid his scar even if he wore it at an odd angle to show off the bit of his face the scar was on, and gave him light brown hair instead of the usual black.

Nobody gave him a second glance, and knowing what he knew now, that was kind of cool.

They all dutifully trooped through the relevant shops to get their school robes, books, and potions ingredients and equipment.

At the bookshop, Harry's dad let each of them pick one extra book, out of his own pocket rather than Mrs Weasley's budget. Ron got ' _ The Life and Times of Gordon Horton _ ', which Harry was fairly sure was one of the Chudley Cannons' players Ron was particularly fond of. The twins pooled their resources for a box-set of two books called ' _ Chemistry For Wizards _ ' and ' _ Potions for Muggles _ '. Percy got ' _ Preferred Preface for Perfect Prefects _ ', which surprised no one and entertained the twins no end. Harry, who had never wanted for books thanks to his dad's job, just got the latest issue of ' _ The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle _ ', as it was a running joke in their household to compare Martin Miggs' madcap adventures to Muggle comics about magic-users, and see who got it the most wrong. So far, Green Lantern was winning, but it was often a close contest.

At the robes shop, there was just the one other kid there, ahead of them in the queue. Harry hadn't met any wizards his own age, besides the Weasleys. He knew they had a friend near their house called Luna, but he'd never met her. So it was little surprise that this boy was totally unfamiliar to Harry.

The blond boy snorted when he saw them. "Let me guess," he sneered. "Red hair, ratty old robes, you must be the Weasleys."

Ron growled, with surprising depth for his age and slightly less surprising murderous intent, and the twins looked ready for a fight. Harry, thankfully, defused the tension by saying, perfectly deadpan, "How nice that you recognise them. And you are...?” 

That broke the spell; the twins snickered at this, while Ron seemed a bit confused that they wouldn't in fact be fighting this boy. Meanwhile the blond was left both confused and fuming with embarrassment.

Harry's dad chuckled after a moment - possibly more amused by the reaction it got than the joke itself - and when the shopkeep approached them he deliberately flashed a  _ lot _ of gold and declared clearly, "Only the highest quality, resizeable, Hogwarts-acceptable robes for all five growing boys, please." Harry knew resizeable clothes; most of his favourites were resizeable, because it meant they would grow with him and he'd not need to buy replacements unless they got damaged... and even then, with the right magic they could be repaired seamlessly. While the shopkeep bustled off to get their robes, Harry's dad turned a smug smirk upon the other boy. "Hey, Draco, has your dad admitted I won the bet yet?"

The blond boy - Draco, apparently - looked confused for a moment. It seemed he really did not want to admit to not knowing who Harry's dad was, but at the same time needed to respond somehow. After a few seconds, he finally settled on asking suspiciously, "What bet would that be?"

"That the bookshop is in fact not cursed, he's just paranoid," was his dad's reply.

That cleared up the confusion instantly, and Draco looked wary now. "You're the assistant at Flourish and Blotts." It was not a question, nor even a sneer at the occupation. No, it sounded more like an accusation. An accusation tinged with just a little bit of fear.

Harry's dad grinned. "And this is my son," he gestured to Harry, who politely waved. "He'll be going to Hogwarts this year, too."

Draco gave Harry's dad a very nervous look, then cast a confused glance at the Weasley boys, his expression clearly saying that he had no idea what was going on there but it was somehow offensive to him. Then finally, putting on a good attempt at manners, he faced Harry properly. "A pleasure to meet you," he said, holding out a hand to shake. "I'm Draco Malfoy."

Now Malfoy was a name Harry had heard before. His dad's entirely-joking feud with Lucius was the subject of many hilarious stories. Well, his dad considered the feud a joke. Harry wasn't entirely sure Lucius felt the same way.

"Harry Potter," he replied, taking off his hat just long enough to show the scar. This situation was too funny to keep the shocking truth from the poor kid. It could be interpreted as a slight that he didn't accept the handshake, or as being polite to the witch who was measuring him up for robes that he didn't just walk away from her to go socialise with Draco.

Harry liked the latter as an excuse for the former.

Draco's eyes widened, totally shocked. He glanced at Harry's dad briefly, then shook his head in confusion. "I thought your parents were supposed to be dead?"

"People say that about me a lot," Harry's dad said dryly. "Nah, it's called adoption, genius."

Draco frowned for a moment, wincing slightly as he probably realised just how rude he'd been. A small part of Harry thought that perhaps there was hope for him yet. "Oh, that makes sense, then." 

The frown remained, as he eyed Harry's dad for a moment longer, as though he was wondering just what made him worthy of the honour of raising someone famous like Harry.

Harry scowled at that. Perhaps that small part of him had been a bit too generous. All told, it was a good thing Draco seemed finished with his robes, as he left quickly after that before someone said something really stupid.

Moments after he was gone, the twins were on either side of Harry, asking, "You know his family are bad eggs, right?"

"Heard what he said about us, didn't you?"

"People believe what they're told, unless proved wrong," Harry said, remembering what his dad had said about propaganda, even going so far to glance at his dad for confirmation that he was right as he said it. His dad was pretending not to look, but smiled faintly all the same. "We just need to prove to him you guys are cool, and his dad's a jerk."

"Lucy  _ is _ a jerk," Harry's dad confirmed, smirking brightly now. "But he's a powerful jerk, so be careful playing mind-games with his son."

"Who says I'm planning to play mind-games?" Harry asked, far too innocently. He knew all too well that being too-nice to someone who wanted to be your enemy was  _ definitely _ a form of mind-game. It was one of the few his dad actually encouraged instead of getting angry or upset over.

"I raised you, kid," his dad chided, laughing.

Harry smiled, completely unrepentant, and shrugged. It was true, after all.

\---

After robes, they got ice-cream at Florean Fortescue's, and finally to the wand shop.

Bucky did not like Mr Ollivander. It was something about his eyes, made him feel like the old man was getting inside his head, even though he'd read about Legilimency and knew the signs to watch for, and Mr Ollivander didn't show any of them.

No, it was just that the guy was fundamentally creepy.

His little speech about brother wands, insinuating Harry and Riddle were connected or similar in any way, wasn't exactly one Bucky appreciated, either. He was more than happy to get his mind off of that, when he put on his illusion of a different face and took the boys out into Muggle London and into one of the nicer movie theatres in the area.

Harry caught on to what he was doing well before he did it. The giggling and muttering between him and Ron was unmistakable.

Since WWII there had been three previous attempts at making Captain America movies. None in the last two decades, because they had all been massive failures in one way or another. The first was just a propaganda piece, having very little beyond the protagonist's name to do with the actual events of Steve's wartime service. The second was a dreadfully written love story, focusing so closely on Steve and Peggy that you could hardly spot the war in the background. The third was a darker, edgier indie work, using famous names from the war to try to show that the soldiers were human, and unsubtly hinting at Steve and Bucky being in love with each other.

To be fair, they did love each other, just not  _ like that. _

It had now been five years since some elements of the HYDRA-hunting campaign had been declassified, and this new film was the result. Bucky was a bit surprised no one had tried to stop or delay its release, what with Steve being found alive only three and a half months ago - it could be either a good excuse for someone who looked like Steve roaming around (they could claim he was a fan, though Bucky dreaded the day that someone at SHIELD introduced Steve to the wonderful world of cosplay), or a really bad idea that could clue people in if they spotted him out and about - but apparently either they'd decided not to try to stop it, or they had failed miserably.

It was  _ the _ big hit of the summer.

Bucky - with the aid of a privacy-charmed trinket, so no one else heard him speak at all - spent the entire movie telling Ron and Harry which parts were fairly accurate (surprisingly many... or at least many more than any previous iteration of this story), made up, or misrepresented. He also told them the stories of what really happened, whenever the movie went off track.

They had McDonalds for dinner, and all five boys were ready to fall asleep by the time they got back to the house.

Molly and Arthur were quite displeased with the expensive robes. When Bucky explained that he had done it to upset a Malfoy, Arthur backed down almost immediately, and when he showed Molly the maths - that, if she wanted to feel so obliged, she could pay him back every year that she didn't have to buy them new robes because of the resizing charms, and she'd still end up saving money in the long run - she also admitted defeat. An aversion to charity was not entirely an aversion to good sense, especially when thriftiness was involved.

All in all, it was a good day, and Bucky was looking forward to dragging (or blackmailing, if he couldn't be there in person) Steve to see that movie as soon as he was able.

\---

Steve sat alone in the empty movie theatre, staring at the now-blank screen. The credits had finished a few minutes ago, and he was still in something of a state of shock.

This was really what people thought of him?

It was fundamentally terrifying to see himself painted as such an unrealistic, inhumanly pure, heroic icon.

His therapist had mentioned the movies (this was only the latest, there'd been three more apparently), and then told him he should probably avoid it. She was right, he really should have.

A distant part of his mind imagined Bucky laughing at the inaccuracies and questioning the sanity of the writers... but sitting alone now, all he could really think of was that there was no way he could live up to the standards this fairy-tale of a 'life story' made him out to be.

Sure, he was a decent guy, but there's a difference between that and what had been on the screen. It had all but compared him to Christ; there was actual savior symbolism in it, for God's sake!

He felt sick.

\---

Steve wasn't entirely sure what to make of this - to him wholly new - concept of therapy.

It took him a while to accept the idea that, actually, a lot of people - even back in his day - had these problems and just hid them, so only the truly dire cases were noticed and sent to asylums. Part of it was that it simply wasn't the done thing to put your feelings on show. Part of it, he had to admit, was probably that fear of being thrown in an asylum was a good motive to hide such feelings. Now, in this strange future, they'd decided that talking about feelings that could land you with a diagnosis of shell-shock back in the day could prevent it from getting worse, or even help you get back to a normal life after experiencing unbearable horrors.

Steve didn't think he had it that bad, but his therapist pointed out little details when he admitted them and said those were warning signs. It was called PTSD now.

Apparently, when he jumped at loud noises, she felt he was remembering the gunfire and bombs in the war, and a surge of adrenaline from 'everyday noises' like that was a common symptom. He supposed she could be right, but the whole world seemed a lot louder now than it used to be; he wasn't entirely convinced that was on him and not on the passage of time. That said, there was enough to what she was saying that he was pensive rather than sceptical - the nightmares, for instance.

When he told her about the movie and how he didn't like the idea of being seen like that, she suggested he might benefit from some time away from the city, to regain his bearings and learn more about the history that had gotten them to this point.

There was a lovely cabin on a lake that SHIELD unsubtly codenamed The Retreat; she suggested he could do with the vacation. He agreed, on condition that he could have access to a computer and the Internet while he was there.

He assumed the location and all communications in and out of it would be monitored thoroughly.

\---


	6. Sorting

\---

Bucky had just gotten home from dropping Harry off at the Hogwarts Express, and was in the process of settling down to read a book about illegal blood magic (written with the intent of spotting and apprehending its practitioners, of course), when the charmed trinket he'd given the other half of to Steve began to grow warm.

That meant Steve could be in danger (or at least felt threatened).

He had collected several of these trinkets, with the intent of giving them to those he cared about. So far, only two were active; one for Steve and one for Harry. His half of these trinkets were links on a charm bracelet; Harry's was a lightning bolt, while Steve's was a flat circle to represent the shield.

He swiftly headed for the upstairs room where he kept his less-than-legal magical items. Foe glasses and sneakoscopes were one thing, but this sort of scrying was dodgy, according to British Wizarding laws. Apparently, because it was one-way and the observed was totally unaware of it, it was considered threatening, or stalking, or something like that. It didn’t help that you needed to know the person pretty well to pull it off.

Bucky imagined those laws were passed by some paranoid bastard who expected to be scried on in the shower, or the like. His opinion on the matter was, basically that everyone else was doing it, and he needed to keep up with the international espionage organisations.

Steve was thankfully not in the shower when Bucky got to the scrying crystal, but nor was he in any danger, as the threat-detector charm has suggested. He was sitting, looking perfectly calm and relaxed, on an uncomfortable looking couch in an unfamiliar log-cabin-esque room, reading  _ The Fellowship of the Ring _ .

Okay, Steve had a good imagination, but there was no way just  _ reading a book _ about dangerous adventures would trigger the charm. Bucky watched as Steve turned a page, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. The charm warmed again, just as Steve touched the ring on his right hand.

Oh, so the little shit was doing it on purpose.

Steve glanced to the side for a moment, then set the book down - that horrible way he had of setting the open pages face-down so it bent the spine - and wandered across the room. Bucky soon saw he was approaching a kitchenette, and starting to make coffee... but as he did so, he started to hum.

_ We're Off to See the Wizard _ .

Bucky knew an obvious hint when he saw one, and felt a small surge of pride. Steve felt he was being watched by someone other than Bucky, he didn't like the situation he was in, but he was being subtle so whoever was watching him wouldn't notice.

Bucky picked up his illusion necklace, Portkey, and Muggle zapper, and got to work.

\---

Within five minutes of Steve first sending his message, the entire little log cabin had been thoroughly freed of functional electronics, and Bucky was sitting on the horrendously uncomfortable couch next to Steve, looking entirely too pleased with his work.

"If they were watching you, we've got maybe ten minutes before they get here to fix the tech," Bucky explained. "I have got to know how you tricked the sensor ring."

"My therapist called it PTSD," Steve admitted. Bucky's eyes widened at that; he clearly recognised the term, and was surprised to hear it attributed to Steve. "I just thought back to some of the worst I'd felt during the war, and... well, it obviously worked."

Bucky frowned thoughtfully. "Well we need to get a better way for you to call me when you just want a chat," he muttered darkly, shooting Steve a look that said this was far from the end of the PTSD conversation but it could at least wait.

Steve chuckled, ignoring Bucky's look with the air of long practise. "Yeah, we really should."

"So what's the deal with this place?" Bucky asked, looking around. "What sort of log cabin has starmetal-lined walls and a panic room full of all the fun toys?"

"Wait; starmetal?"

"That's what the wizards call it; specifically 'southern starmetal'... although, if I recall Howard Stark's gleeful rants, it's also called Vibranium." Bucky raised an eyebrow as he said that, smirking. So the wizards would call his shield 'starmetal', apparently.

"Starmetal?" he said out loud, amused and slightly sceptical.

Bucky shrugged. "The alchemists have more technical names for it," he said. "But that's what most of them call it. It's pretty popular for exotic potions, and I hear runesmiths freakin' love it, but it's rare as hen's teeth, so I'm really impressed - and deeply suspicious - that SHIELD managed to scrounge up enough to do what they've done here. There's also something they call northern starmetal - I don't know the proper name for that one, normal or magical - it's even rarer, and I've actually never seen it, but apparently master alchemists covet it for some reason."

"And what 'fun toys' are in the panic room I did  _ not _ know this cabin had?" Steve had done a thorough perimeter check when he'd arrived. If there was a panic room, it had to be underground and its entrance well hidden.

"Oh, just more assorted weapons than even Dum Dum would know what to do with," Bucky said with a vague shrug. Since when did Bucky call weapons 'fun toys'? That was not his style at all.

Still, Steve shrugged, pretending not to be bothered by that change. "I've got an idea. Can I have that Muggle-zapper thing?"

Bucky eyed him with false suspicion for several seconds, before pulling out the innocuous disc from a pocket. "Let me guess, you're going to set a precedent for electronics frying around you, so it doesn't correlate with my showing up?"

Steve grinned. "Gotta start somewhere."

Bucky handed the disc over, also grinning. "I'll work on an alternate means of communication. Swear I read something that might work, a while back..."

Steve nodded, "They've got me in this 'retreat' for almost two months. I get out just before Hallowe'en."

"You're talking like it's a prison," Bucky muttered darkly.

"Kinda feels like it," Steve admitted, with a dismissive shrug. "But I intend to have fun while I'm stuck here," he added, holding up the Muggle-zapper to demonstrate.

"Like most magical things, it's charmed to seem not-worth-noticing to Muggles, unless attention is deliberately drawn to it like when I first showed it to you. So don't forget where you set it down, or you might never find it again."

"And here I was worried about trying to hide it from surveillance whenever I use it," Steve muttered, chuckling ruefully.

"Oh, do that too - objects with unremarkable charms on them still show up on cameras. The magic persists, meaning the person reviewing the footage  _ shouldn't _ notice it... but then again, they might," Bucky explained, before shrugging again as if all these new rules of magic he was sharing with Steve weren't really that big of a deal. "Have fun," he offered, before standing up and activating the Portkey to leave.

It took SHIELD a further two minutes to show up. When they did, Steve was innocently reading as he had been before. When the STRIKE team all-but stormed in, Steve just looked up at them with a look of naive confusion. "Is something wrong, guys?"

The team leader - a man Steve had been introduced to before his trip out here, by the name of Brock Rumlow - looked around with the sort of confusion that showed he had sincerely been expecting a threat and a fight, and maybe he was a bit disappointed that everything seemed to be fine. "We got an alert saying all the tech in here went out," he said. Brock was reportedly a very good fighter, but from Steve's limited experience he was anything but a great conversationalist. "Thought maybe something bad might have happened."

Steve shrugged. "I didn't even notice," he said simply. To be fair, he hadn't noticed anything  _ bad _ happening, so if you twist the truth hard enough he wasn't even really lying. He held up his book to clarify why he might not have noticed the power going out.

Brock looked around, still suspicious as he peered around the open-plan cabin. Short of revealing the apparently-secret panic room to Steve, he checked the place out quite thoroughly. When nothing was amiss, he shrugged, now seeming a bit frustrated on top of the confusion. "We'll get some techs up to fix the power and whatever else's out."

"I hope they're done soon? I'd planned on using the computer later," Steve said. It was perfectly true, and the earnestness with which he said it didn't need to be faked.

Brock nodded dismissively, not appearing at all suspicious that Steve could have had something to do with the blackout. Sure, he was obviously suspicious about the situation... but not about Steve. "We'll see what we can do, Captain."

Steve smiled warmly at them all. "Thanks."

\---

The Weasley twins were dirty rotten liars, and there absolutely was  _ not _ any kind of fighting involved in the Sorting ceremony.

Harry stepped up to the stool, sat down and put on the Hat, just like everyone else. Then he jumped slightly, just as he'd seen several other kids do... because the Hat was  _ talking to him. _

"Hmm... difficult. Very difficult. Deep loyalty, I see. Cunning, too. Plenty of courage, yes. Wise beyond your years... and a great strength of will. Very interesting. So where shall I put you?"

Harry frowned, thinking about the question. He didn't know much about the Hogwarts houses; Albus had once told him - when Molly had tried to explain it - that it was better to approach the Sorting with an open mind, rather than preconceptions. He wasn't sure which of those traits it spoke of meant what for him. In his mind, they were all kind of unrealistic compliments, really. Who even called an eleven-year-old 'wise', even with a qualifier?

"You could be great, you know," the Hat prompted him.

_ Are you trying to get me to choose? _ He thought irritably at it.  _ I thought that was  _ your  _ job. _

Well, he didn't want to be  _ great _ . He wanted to be  _ good _ ... and if this Hat wanted to fight about it, he'd just have to take a page out of Captain America's book and prove it.

"Ah, well that settles it then." He would swear he heard the Hat chuckling distantly, and realised just as it did that in his own way, he’d quite probably chosen anyway, before it shouted out; "GRYFFINDOR!"

\---

Harry's first week of school breezed by quickly. He'd heard enough stories from Mrs Weasley, and Albus' other friends, to know what to expect in Gryffindor Tower. Most of them had been Gryffindors, and he'd heard many stories about how his parents had been too. Sometimes it was weird to hear them talking about his mum and dad and know they didn't mean his  _ dad. _ When that distinction came up, he tended to divide them into 'Mr Potter' and 'Bucky'... even though he knew both were commonly called James by all the Wizards, just to make things extra complicated.

Apparently his dad had gone by Bucky back when he was living in the Muggle world, because James was just such a common name, and he'd known so many other Jameses (two in the Howling Commandos alone!) it was probably for the best.

Anyway, the stories of Mr Potter and his closest friends getting up to mischief in Gryffindor Tower had, all on their own, given him a decent idea of the tower's layout. He quickly grew accustomed to the features he'd already heard about, from the warm fireplace to the shabby bookshelves, to the two staircases up to the dormitories; the girls' stairs charmed to turn into a slide if a boy set foot on it. He could see at least one flaw in that already.

He deeply distrusted the Weasley twins' theory that there was a secret passage leading out of the boys' bathrooms, especially since he'd heard from other sources that the only secret passage in the tower was in one of those bookcases... he'd just have to wait to figure out how to activate the bookcase passageway when no one else was around. The opportunity hadn't come up yet.

Classes were new and interesting, but they all followed the standard pattern he'd expected of school. Sit at a desk, take notes, practice the practical side when necessary. Transfiguration interested him the most, because it bothered his dad the most - changing one thing into another thing without either making it forget its original form or breaking the laws of conservation of energy - the books never explained  _ how _ and his dad couldn't work it out for himself either.

Potions was also... interesting.

"Harry Potter. Our new... celebrity."

Harry rolled his eyes, and declared clearly for all to hear, "Not like I asked for it."

The teacher - Professor Snape - glared at him for that, "One house point will be deducted from Gryffindor for speaking out of turn, Mr Potter."

Harry returned the glare, full force. His dad had taught him well not to allow others to intimidate or attempt to dominate him.  _ 'Loads of people say 'respect must be earned',' _ his dad had told him.  _ 'Those people are usually hypocrites; they expect to be respected automatically while demanding you earn theirs in return. I say be respectful at first - it's only polite, when you've just met someone - but if they do something to earn your disrespect make sure they know that. Then they're allowed to try to earn it back, but make 'em work for it.' _

"You spoke to me, I replied," Harry said coolly. "That's basic manners, and you never said exactly how I had to answer roll call. Keep telling half-truths about me like they're gospel and I'll keep correcting you. Professor." This last was added almost as an afterthought. Teachers at Hogwarts, he understood, were a bit particular about their titles.

Several of the other students snickered at that. From both houses present in this class, which seemed a bit odd given what Harry had heard about the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

Snape's eyes narrowed in a calculating way, but interestingly he didn't retaliate a second time. "Very well, Mr Potter. Since you believe yourself so knowledgeable, tell me; what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

That was way beyond anything Harry had read in his quick skimming over the course material for the year. He frowned for half a second, before answering, "Most likely the answer to a question in the seventh years' textbooks."

More snickering from both houses.

Snape scowled at him deeply. "Incorrect, Mr Potter."

"It's fifth year," a girl nearby hissed in a carrying whisper.

Harry glanced at her. She was the same bushy-haired girl who had explained the Great Hall's ceiling to everyone their first night here... but he couldn't remember her name from the Sorting, though.

"Another house point from Gryffindor for your cheek, Miss Granger," Snape said coldly, before returning his full attention to Harry. "And Mr Potter; name a potion that requires both valerian and mistletoe."

Well, if Snape was responding as anticipated to Harry's very deliberate prodding, then this should be from the first year textbook at least. That  _ was _ a big if, though. He didn't exactly read the book very thoroughly, just a quick look to see what he'd get to learn this year, but he thought... he kind of remembered... which was ironic, really. "Forgetfulness potion?"

And he'd won. He could tell.

The look on Snape's face was of reluctant respect hastily hidden under some other dislike. Harry really wasn't sure what he was supposed to have done to make this guy hate him, but it sure seemed like it was personal. He seemed even more irritable at the fact Harry had answered correctly, as he nodded curtly and resumed the roll call without further comment upon Harry.

The class proceeded with the first potion in the book: an supposedly very simple solution to cure boils. Harry paired off with Ron and carefully made sure to follow every step of the instructions to the letter.

Unfortunately, just as Harry and Ron's potion was coming together nicely, the cauldron next to theirs melted explosively, covering the boy who'd been working on it in sizzling red liquid that seemed to cause some nasty looking burns. Everyone was quick to get off the floor as the potion seeped out over the ground.

"Idiot boy!" Snape snarled, magically vanishing the spilled potion with a wave of his wand. "I suppose you added the porcupine quills before taking the cauldron off the fire?" He swiftly rounded on the boy's partner. "Take him up to the hospital wing." Then, as the boy scrambled to obey, Snape turned to Harry and Ron. "You - Potter - why didn't you tell him not to add the quills? Thought he'd make you look good if he got it wrong, did you? That's another point you've lost for Gryffindor."

"Yes, Professor," Harry said, bowing his head and nodding as if chastened. "I do have eyes on the back of my head, and it was totally my fault that I didn't use them to monitor the whole class instead of focusing on my own work. I absolutely deserve to lose house points for it."

Everyone - even Draco Malfoy, though he looked somewhat shocked at himself for doing so - laughed at that one.

Snape seemed livid... but once again he didn't retaliate. Class resumed, somewhat tensely, and once the full hour was up Harry was ordered to stay after class.

Once everyone left, Snape examined Harry and Ron's completed potion carefully, before looking up at Harry with that intense dislike he had openly displayed before.

"What gives you the right to challenge me in my own classroom?"

Harry met his gaze evenly. "What gives you the right to humiliate the students you should be teaching?"

It was an evenly matched standoff. For all that Snape seemed threatening it also felt like he was all bark and no bite. Harry wasn't exactly fearless, but he'd learned how to stand up for himself just fine. Snape glared and fumed, but then he backed down ever-so-slightly.

"You are just like your father," he growled.

"Which one?" Harry asked, tilting his head to the side slightly. Curious now that the power-games seemed to be done.

Snape frowned, as if he hadn't even thought of that detail. "Potter."

"Well I wouldn't know," Harry shrugged. "I am a lot like my dad, though."

Snape snorted. "I have yet to meet this mysterious Muggle who was deemed worthy of protecting the great Harry Potter."

"Will you stop doing that please?" Harry asked. Snape frowned at him for that, confusion clear in his gaze. Harry decided the best approach to this was to go all-out. The cold truth. "There's nothing great about me, I'm just some kid who had a really bad Hallowe'en when I was one. I'm only a celebrity because  _ other people _ wanted me to be. I don't want special treatment, but you sure gave me a lot of extra attention in class today for it."

Snape seemed to realise what Harry was doing at this point, and to Harry's astonishment he actually snorted with laughter. "Where did you learn such a sharp way with words?"

Harry grinned; half proud, half showing off how dangerous he knew his words really were. "My dad."

"I detained you to issue further reprimand, instead you educate me," Snape murmured softly. "Perhaps I have underestimated you; nature and nurture both."

Harry took that in rather carefully. He had already figured out Snape had a problem of some sort with Mr Potter, from the context of this conversation. Now he realised there was something else. "Did you know my mother?"

Snape looked away. "Yes. We were friends once."

Cared for his mother, hated his father. Makes some sense, at least.

"I'm sorry," Harry said, not at all apologising for anything, but attempting to convey the empathy he felt. He'd never personally lost a close friend, but his dad had; everyone thought Steve was dead until this year. Harry had seen how it could really hurt.

"You're dismissed, Potter."

\---

The seventh time the power went out at the Retreat, and still the Captain hadn't disappeared, nor had there been any evidence of attempted infiltration, Jasper Sitwell might have begun to crack ever-so-slightly.

It was partly due to the pressure Secretary Pierce was putting on him to figure this whole mess out. Jasper had been HYDRA's first human contact with the Captain since he woke up this century, and he'd been right there next to Fury and Carter in the debriefing, so he was considered the most likely to come across as a 'trusted face'. True, there was Julie Moon, their therapist working with the Captain... but he showed some degree of open distrust of her, even if it could well be attributed to the whole idea of therapy being new to him.

So it fell mostly on Jasper to figure this whole mess out.

There had been absolutely no sign of, let alone lead on, the Asset other than that one three-second video clip. Jasper vaguely wondered if it even was the Asset, or if it was just a really good disguise? He reviewed the footage, and the man in the video had both hands visible - no gloves, no metal. It wouldn't even take a photostatic veil to fool the camera that had captured that moment; it was neither SHIELD nor HYDRA issue, just a New York City traffic camera. Maybe someone just figured using his best friend's face was a good way to lure the Captain in? If so, it worked... which  _ might _ mean that whatever was going on wasn't even something the Captain knew about or agreed to. Maybe there was another faction at play.

But Jasper really wasn't so sure that telling his bosses this theory would be all that good for his life-expectancy - Pierce  _ really _ wanted the Asset back - so he just kept looking and hoping he was wrong.

Whoever was behind them, these power outages were spectacularly frustrating. Totally randomly, something - or several somethings - in the general vicinity of the Captain would just stop working for no discernible reason. They weren't burned out, they weren't broken, they just stopped. On several occasions they stopped in plain view of surveillance that wasn't affected, but nothing appeared amiss according to the footage. The techs couldn't fix these deactivated items... but every single one just resumed functioning normally after precisely twelve hours, so long as it was plugged in or had batteries. Phones and computers didn't even lose data from it - they didn't reboot when they came back, but rather they would resume functioning from the exact state they had ceased... as though they had somehow simply lost time, instead of being shut down.

Fury even ordered a team of techs in to scan the Captain himself for strange readings, and attended personally while they did so. They got nothing. In the end, it was filed 084, possibly connected in some way to either the super-soldier serum or the Captain's contact with Project Pegasus.

Jasper kept digging, because HYDRA couldn't afford to let it drop so easily.

First of all, they  _ knew _ that serum shouldn't be doing this. They'd never had power issues with the Asset. That sure would have been a disaster, if they had.

Secondly, Pegasus was supposed to be a power  _ source, _ so how or why would it cut things off without overloading them? Didn't make sense, even HYDRA's people on the tech teams agreed with him on that one.

So it had to be something else, and whatever that something else was it was focused very much on the Captain. They hadn't seen anything like it anywhere else.

It just kept happening, and by the time the Captain was due to return from the Retreat, the entirety of SHIELD were none-the-wiser as to why.

And then on Hallowe'en, the Captain disappeared again.

\---


	7. Evasion

\---

It was a silly, trivial idea. Steve thought it would be hilarious, as well as good for his plan to set a precedent. If he randomly disappeared, then played totally oblivious to it, SHIELD would be baffled - more so than they already clearly were. If he did it repeatedly, then they might begin to let their guards down. He figured they'd either conclude that it had something to do with how close he got to the Red Skull's mystic power source, or that someone or something else was messing with him. For all he knew, that strange conspiracy he'd read recently about 'little grey aliens' could end up on their list of possible explanations.

Like he imagined; hilarious.

It was either this, or try to convince an international espionage agency to let him out on his own, when he'd already disappeared twice. Yeah, they weren't likely to buy that.

He signalled Bucky the day he got back to the SHIELD-provided apartment in New York, just as it began to get dark - using the threat-detector ring, because they hadn't seen each other since that first day in the Retreat. Then he used the zapper to knock out all the surveillance in the apartment.

Bucky predictably showed up, looking amused. "What are you up to now?"

"I want to get out of here for a bit," Steve admitted.

"You just got here," Bucky retorted, smirking.

"Yeah, but I'm mostly referring to being watched by SHIELD all the time," Steve explained with a shrug. "They mean well, but they're kind of smothering."

Bucky raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, sure they mean well. They're a spy organisation, they're good actors."

Steve rolled his eyes at the paranoia. "Look, is there anywhere you can take me?"

"I was in the middle of dinner with Molly and her family," Bucky admitted. "Wizards really go all out for Hallowe'en. You'll love it."

"Oh, I don't want to impose-"

"It's my house," Bucky said firmly. " _ You _ are always welcome."

So that was the end of that discussion, and Bucky teleported them to the now-familiar cottage in Scotland.

There was not an inch of free shelf space that didn't have a carved jack-o-lantern on it, all twinkling either merrily or ominously depending on how you wanted to look at them.

As it always seemed to be, the house felt warm and inviting, perhaps even more so given how oddly cold the Retreat had felt. Not that the actual temperature in the Retreat had been the problem, so much as how hard it tried to give the illusion of being quaint and cosy without even coming close to achieving that goal.

This house actually  _ was _ cosy.

Especially when packed with five unfamiliar but cheerful red-heads. Bucky introduced them as Steve sat down. The woman and the oldest of the men were Molly and Arthur Weasley, the parents of one of Harry's best friends. The two younger men were Bill and Charlie, older brothers of Harry's friend, the little girl was Ginny, the youngest child of the family, and they had another four boys off at boarding school with Harry.

Steve and Bucky had known a few large families like this, back when they'd lived together in New York; almost without exception, in Steve's experience, the bigger the family, the more open and friendly the people in it. SHIELD had told him this sort of thing was very rare these days. Part of the changing culture of the world, and not without some logical reasons - birth control these days was rather more reliable, and raising kids healthily and happily cost both time and money that wasn’t always easily spared, and even with far improved medical care, having children could still be a risky business. Like many things from his time, large families had had their downsides - Steve knew that and wouldn’t dream of denying it. That didn’t mean, however, that he didn’t miss them all the same.

The Weasley family proved true to the pattern, all warmly greeting Steve and happily moving over to make room for him. Sure, this wasn't their house, but Bucky said Molly did all the cooking.

"Yeah, because you'd burn the place down," Steve retorted.

"You're the one who managed to set boiled cabbage on fire; I saved your  _ life _ that day!" Bucky taunted right back, drawing laughter from everyone save Molly. She had a look Steve recognised instantly, that of a matriarch whose word was family law, and who consequently had that look of a long-suffering disciplinarian trying to hide her amusement for the sake of her authority.

Ten minutes of pleasant, idle conversation - and delicious food - later, Bill suddenly asked. "Is it true, you two are blood-brothers?"

"Now, boys," Arthur said firmly. "No feeding the rumour-mills. You know blood magic's been illegal for decades, outside of very restricted circumstances, you don't want to insult our hosts."

"Where'd you even hear a rumour like that?" Steve asked.

Bill shrugged with all false innocence. Steve guessed Harry and/or Ron had found out about it from Bucky - whether by accident or otherwise - and Bill had got the story from his little brother.

The subject was dropped like it had never mattered, and Steve spent the next half hour learning about a sport called Quidditch, which was apparently  _ the _ major sport in magical Britain. Played on broomsticks, fifty feet up in the air.

"Quadpot's better," Bucky said blandly, as they finished off dessert. This was clearly calculated, Steve knew, and by the reaction, he could guess why.

The other men had all frozen, staring at Bucky with the exact same shocked disgust as the British soldiers used to do when Bucky had the nerve to call their favourite sport 'soccer'. Which he did specifically to get this very reaction out of them. Steve had no investment here; he was a baseball fan... but he could read the room.

Steve shook his head. "I'm not a part of this," he declared, starting to clear plates. Molly joined him, giving her husband and sons a quelling look, as if they could comprehend the idea that sports weren't worth fighting over.

Ginny, thus far friendly and plenty spunky enough not to be overawed by her numerous big brothers, seemed to be intent on sitting back and enjoying the show, with a smirk that belied her years - one that made additional sense considering the very slight, sly wink that Bucky shot her. Steve cheerfully did most of the work on the dishes, with Molly just putting things away when he was done. They had just finished the dishes, and the argument about magical sports had yet to get out of hand, when the fireplace blazed up green, and a face appeared within the embers.

The face of Albus Dumbledore.

\---

Bucky was furious. Usually, if one hears from their child's head teacher it's supposed to be because the kid got in a fight, or pulled some sort of prank, or the like.

Not this time, though.

No, this time somehow there had been a  _ mountain troll _ in the school... and instead of warning the staff that their classmate had run off to cry in the bathroom before they'd heard about the troll, Harry and Ron had gone looking for the girl on their own.

With a  _ mountain troll _ on the loose.

He was slightly less furious with Harry's behaviour (at least he brought an accomplice to have his back - learned something right from all those stories of Steve's recklessness) than he was at the fact a  _ mountain troll _ got into a  _ school _ .

"What- what exactly was a mountain troll doing in the school?" Arthur asked, eyes wide in shock at the news.

"We are still investigating," Albus said, his tone soothing in a way that always made Bucky wonder if he was using magic to calm the listener down... because it tended to work  _ too _ well. "But we believe someone may have let it in."

"Are the children alright?" Molly asked. Bucky noticed her choice of words - children, not boys - she was including the girl who'd run off before the announcement about the troll.

"Indeed they are," Albus confirmed. "As I understand it, Miss Granger was in immediate danger at the moment Harry and Ronald found her; the boys successfully distracted the troll, and then Ronald managed to render it unconscious with a well-timed levitation charm on its weapon. Quite the feat for a first year."

"Levitation charm?" Arthur asked, a bit confused.

"Yes, indeed, Arthur." This was clearly Albus' smug-mode. He was proud of the kid, as he explained, "The heavy wooden club was pulled from the troll's hand as it swung to attack, and dropped again from a point approximately four feet above the troll's head."

Arthur's eyes widened. "Oh my, that is impressive, yes," he agreed, beaming.

"Let me guess;" Bucky put in, "Harry's part in the heroics involved the words; 'Look at me, I'm a target!'?"

Molly gave Bucky a quelling look for that, but Steve snorted with laughter in spite of obviously trying very hard not to. "Where'd that come from, Buck?"

"British television," Bucky replied, grinning. "You're not the only reckless punk Harry idolises; he's seen Doctor Who, too."

Albus smiled indulgently. "Yes, I do believe those were the precise words he used." Then he added, more seriously. "A point of interest, I think, is that Miss Granger attempted a rather poor subterfuge once they were discovered by the staff. Instead of the innocent truth witnessed by several of the portraits along the corridors, she claimed to have gone looking for the troll in the hope of fighting it; her lie cast the boys in the same heroic role as the truth, but placed unwarranted blame upon herself."

"She thought she was protecting them from getting in trouble for going after her," Steve said. It wasn't a question, and no one took it as such.

"Getting into a fight way over your head with someone is a good bonding exercise," Bucky observed, elbowing Steve sharply in the ribs as he said it.

Steve gave him a reproachful look. "That's what I just said. You don't lie for someone you barely know for nothing."

"Why, exactly, is that so fascinating?" Molly asked, frowning. "They may have been doing the right thing, but it was still terribly dangerous."

"I was merely observing that it is quite likely the boys have made a new friend out of this experience, Molly," Albus clarified. "Miss Granger is a very clever girl, but has been having trouble making friends since her arrival at Hogwarts. I was hoping you and Mr Barnes would consider including her as - I believe the old traditions call it - a shield-sister of your sons."

"Bit young for that, aren't they?" Arthur muttered. Molly was frowning, as well.

Bucky, on the other hand, just shrugged and nodded as if Albus was being perfectly reasonable (for a change). "It's not about actual battle, usually, from what I've read. It's more about friendship, unity, and facing any adversity one might meet as a group instead of alone. Although, I think the troll  _ does _ count."

Molly almost whimpered, turning to her husband. "I can't believe our little Ronnikins fought a  _ troll! _ "

Arthur embraced her, but couldn't quite seem to resist adding. "And he won."

Bucky saw the look Steve shot Albus, while the Weasley parents weren't paying any attention. It was a calculating and judging look. Steve knew Albus was up to something, but the weird thing was the judgement didn't appear to come out in the negative.

\---

Later that evening, after the pair of them were left alone in Bucky's house, Steve asked. "Okay, so tell me more about this shield-sister thing?"

"Well it's usually called 'shield-brother'," Bucky clarified idly, "Because girls tend to be discouraged from warfare, in spite of overwhelming evidence over the centuries that the women who chose it are downright terrifying and should very much not be argued with."

Steve smiled fondly at the memory of Peggy Carter. Yes, that description fit her down to the bone. As it did most of the army nurses he'd known, too, actually.

"But yeah, it's basically a ceremonial term used by the traditionalists to describe the sort of relationship you and I have; close friends who will always have each others' backs. Most traditionalist wizarding families can trace their bloodlines to over a thousand years ago, when battle-mages were a real deal between the warring factions and tribes that used to make up most of Europe back then. The Blacks, for example, used to be the ruling family of an entire faction that's not in the regular history books anymore, using dark magic to defend their territory. The Prewitts - Molly's family - were the mage-allies of Viking warriors, and while the Potters were pretty minor, one of them was supposed to have been affiliated with Merlin somehow. It's all about those old notions of chivalry and honour."

"Old?" Steve asked dubiously.

"Well, the older versions of them," Bucky smirked. "Centuries-old history had different values from our decades-old history. Same words, somewhat different meanings."

Steve frowned at that thought for a moment. He supposed it made sense of a lot of what he heard around SHIELD - they thought chivalry and honour were outdated ideas, but they often still displayed them in their behaviour. Maybe they were thinking of the ancient versions, like Bucky was talking about.

After a while, he shrugged. "So you're okay with the troll thing?"

"I'm okay with Harry and Ron's actions once they encountered the troll," Bucky clarified. "I am going to remind Harry of the importance of informing a superior officer of the danger before disobeying orders to go thwart it... and I will likely murder whoever let the troll into the school if I ever figure out who did that."

While Steve definitely agreed that whoever let the troll in needed to be punished, he was kind of uncomfortable with how casually Bucky threatened murder here. He figured now was as good a time to ask as any, seeing as there really couldn't be an actual good time to ask...

"You never told me exactly what happened when HYDRA had you prisoner... you said something about messing with your mind, but..." he trailed off, not sure how to continue and fairly sure if Bucky even wanted to answer he'd be able to do so from there.

Bucky remained quiet for a minute, staring into the crackling fireplace thoughtfully. Just when Steve thought he really wouldn't answer, he finally spoke softly.

"They made me forget who I was, forget they were the enemy. Tried to force me to obey. Even then, they still had to lie to me, tell me I was doing good when they sent me to assassinate people. I was always a crack shot, but they trained me mercilessly... made me into their perfect killing machine. I murdered  _ hundreds _ of people for them over the decades... it was beyond war, but even back during the war I'd started to get  _ used to it _ . To killing. It got easier, to the point where it feels like the simple solution to a lot of problems, and I have to keep reminding myself that's HYDRA thinking, not me. Sometimes, it feels like it'd be just way too easy."

Steve frowned, looking away. He wanted to say something to comfort his friend, but at the same time he was horrified by what he was hearing and had no idea how to respond. 

Luckily, Bucky decided to change the subject. "So, since we brought it up earlier, I recommend you catch up on some modern pop culture. Starting with Doctor Who; it's the best science fiction I've ever seen, I swear."

\---

So Steve dutifully took Bucky's list of recommendations, and set about catching up with modern movies and television... alongside the actual history he was also still catching up on, of course. He was perfectly capable of keeping the two separate in his mind. Although, that day he was reading about Howard Stark and watching Back To The Future at the same time... shame those flying cars never panned out.

Bucky also got him a magic mirror, for communication. It was concealed in a simple pocket watch, and you had to deliberately open it, press the button and then say the magic password to get it to function. Much better than trying to make himself feel threatened when he was perfectly safe, as he'd had to do with the magic ring. So long as he used the zapper to clear the room first, they could hold full conversations in private, remotely, before SHIELD showed up to investigate the power outage.

He carefully chose not to get too comfortable using the mirror, making sure to have and follow a truly paranoid procedure to be sure he wasn't being watched, before even taking it out of his pocket. And when he eventually caught on to the obvious reference to that television show that the pocket watch (and its unique engravings) evoked, he did use it to tell Bucky what a jerk he was for that.

SHIELD still weren't giving him the chance to investigate the HYDRA location. If he couldn't leave the apartment without them at least knowing he'd disappeared, he wasn't comfortable going off on an actual important mission during the brief time he had away from their prying eyes.

He chose to do his research on the few occasions after Hallowe'en when he visited Bucky. Together, they figured out that the location Albus had given Steve was in Siberia. That really would be hard to get to, without either magic or a much looser leash than SHIELD were offering... and Albus made it perfectly clear that taking Bucky with him to Siberia would be a Very Bad Idea, when they tried to plan for that option.

So Steve had to play nice to SHIELD. Which meant passing the therapist's tests, and getting let out on field missions.

Steve didn't particularly like the therapist. She was  _ too _ calm, almost unnaturally so. She wasn't poised like an aristocrat, or authoritative in the way Peggy came across. She was simply impassive, as if the rest of the world could never hurt her, as if there was no point in either appearing strong nor in being weak.

When they had first met, she had told him to call her Julie.

He still kept calling her ma'am.

She told him that patience was a virtue, the world wasn't so far gone that it couldn't survive without the grand heroics of Captain America for a few more months, and that he should take the time to be sure he really was ready for what would be thrown at him when he began his training and missions with SHIELD.

She occasionally quizzed him on modern things, from kitchen appliances to politics. To test his general knowledge, as much as anything else - you can't adapt to something you don't know. That was her way of putting it.

It was fair enough, he supposed, but that didn't stop it being frustrating.

When he wasn't left alone to learn about the modern era, running off to hang out with Bucky, or having these sessions with the therapist, he went to a local gym to train. Just because SHIELD wouldn't give him their combat training, didn't mean he wanted to allow himself to grow complacent. He had been told it would take a  _ lot _ of inactivity and poor eating habits to even begin to degrade his serum-given physique, so this was more for habit than health. Still, it felt like he was at least doing  _ something _ productive.

It was during one of these gym sessions, in early December, when Fury walked in.

"I hear you've been pulling the disappearing act again," the Director said. No preamble, no small-talk. Straight to the point. Oddly enough, it was one of the things about Fury that Steve actually appreciated - he might be ruthless and manipulative, and he was almost certainly hiding more secrets than Steve had ever known, but there wasn't any varnish or artifice to his persona. He didn't pretend to be something he wasn't, unlike far too many of his subordinates, whether it was by nature or to kiss-up to Captain America.

"You still think it's on purpose?" Steve asked him dubiously.

Fury chuckled, glancing around the room. Steve felt the now-familiar sensation of spy-tech failing in his clothes. "I know you've not been using an EMP; those do more damage... which is why I was considerate enough to wait until you didn't have your phone with you when I  _ did _ use one. It's just you and me, Captain."

"I already told you, sir," Steve said calmly. "I'm not responsible for my disappearances."

Fury's eye narrowed at that. He clearly guessed Steve was telling the truth, but only in the most technical of senses. Very technically, it was Bucky who was making him disappear, even if Steve was now in control of when.

Steve's lip twitched faintly. "Even if I did want to disappear on my own for a while, why would I tell the international spy organisation where I was going?"

"It's more the fact you  _ can _ give us the slip, rather than that you  _ do," _ Fury explained. "I have to say, I dislike not knowing the  _ how _ a lot more than the  _ why. _ Especially given your personal reputation for engaging in grand feats of heroics when you do go off without supervision."

That reasoning, at least, was fair enough. Steve had no illusions about the fact that he was something of a loose cannon, and always had been. He wasn't disposed to apologise for it, either, but he could understand why his nominal CO (and however Fury might word it, that was what he was) might find it aggravating. If nothing else, Steve's disappearing habits pointed to a big hole in his security, one all the more worrying that a man out of time could so quickly and adeptly exploit it.

"It's not that I don't trust  _ you, _ Director," Steve clarified. "I just feel like maybe SHIELD's getting a little bit too far into other people's privacy, and I haven't actually signed up as a member of your organisation yet; not until your therapist clears me."

"If you've nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear," Fury pointed out.

"Yeah, define hiding," Steve snorted. "I'm from the thirties, sir. There are at least two immutable facts about me that'd've been death sentences if the wrong people knew, back then."

Fury clearly did the maths.

Walk into the wrong neighbourhood while Irish back in the day, some gangs would kill you. Get noticed looking too long at the wrong gender, and you'd be in a whole other pile of trouble. Steve wasn't actually queer - or gay, as they called it now - but he wasn't entirely straight either. There had been maybe three men he'd ever seen - only one he had personally known - that he felt that way about, and while the changed social mores of this century made him feel comfortable enough to admit those feelings existed, he'd sure as hell never share their names with anyone... besides Bucky. Bucky knew everything about him.

"Neither of those are issues, nowadays," Fury pointed out firmly.

Steve looked away. He didn't want to test too hard if Fury really knew about HYDRA or not... so he chose to be vague. "Pretty sure there's still some people who wouldn't like me, even now. And I don't mean for those reasons, either."

"You know something I don't?" Fury asked.

Steve snorted. "Maybe, maybe not; I don't know what you know, now do I?"

"Fair enough." Fury nodded. "You need some time, I can allow that. How about Christmas; two weeks, no cameras."

"You say that, but I feel like you just mean 'fewer cameras'," Steve said with a faint smirk.

"I'm sure you can cope with that," Fury dismissed with a shrug. "I know most of my staff will be on leave, to see their families. Perfect time for a getaway, if you ask me."

"There are worse," Steve conceded. He didn't say anything more, and Fury didn't ask. Messages had been sent both ways, and understood accordingly.

\---


	8. Trust

\---

'Healing' hadn't really been something Bucky had particularly thought about at the time.

He was acutely aware of the way his perception of the world around him had shifted between his first few meetings with Albus. He knew Albus had used some sort of magic to fix most of the damage to his mind, but he'd never been particularly interested in finding out how it had been done, only how well it had worked.

When he had asked, Albus simply said that the magic had fully restored all his memories; something which would have been far more difficult - often impossible - to do, had the exact same level of damage been caused by magic... but apparently magic was  _ really _ good at undoing things that happened without its help.

That was literally all it had done, though.

Everything else was on him. He had gone back to acting like his old self out of an absolute need to avoid the other parts of his past. He'd coped fairly well, most of the time, but it had taken maybe a few months before he'd realised Albus had taken precautions nonetheless.

There were spells in place to control him, in case he lost control of himself.

The most significant of which was that he couldn't commit violence of any sort in the house Albus had given him. It hadn't happened often, and even when his mind almost snapped under the pressure of the nightmares of the Winter Soldier, he had only ever tried to attack a few inanimate objects.

That was enough for the spells, though. He had been unable to eviscerate the empty armchair he'd targeted the first time he's sunk back into that dreadful mindset. In hindsight, he wasn't entirely certain, but he thought maybe his damaged mind had decided the chair in question looked too much like one that had once belonged to a former handler... and he'd imagined said handler was sitting in it at the time of his breakdown.

Another one of those precautions was that if Harry's needs had ever been neglected for more than twenty-four hours, Molly would have been informed by a monitoring spell. He only found out about that one when it was being decommissioned... because at six years old Harry had proven he could order his own pizza from the nearby Muggle town - thus not starving if meals weren't served in the hypothetical scenario of Bucky hiding himself away from the world - and operate the Floo Network to call for help himself, in the now-extremely-unlikely event that Bucky failed in his duty of care.

Considering some of the shit that HYDRA had done to his mind, Bucky felt he was right to be proud of the fact that he had never failed on that front. Even when he  _ had _ been in those dark places, he'd still managed to take care of the kid... because his priorities put himself, and by extension his own self-pity, far far behind the kid's wellbeing.

The non-violence spells were still in place, though... and they worked on everyone who set foot in the house. They didn't stop magic, but they did stop all mundane weapons from causing harm; everything from fists to knives to guns.

Bucky hadn't been entirely happy about that, when he'd heard about it - what if a wizard broke in and attacked them, and he wasn't able to defend himself or Harry because all his methods of doing so were neutralised? Apparently, Albus had considered this; at the first sign of magical hostility - which meant  _ any _ spell that could have a negative impact on a human if it struck - the non-violence field would temporarily cease, allowing Bucky to defend himself, and by extension Harry.

He'd grumbled about that, too. What if Harry grew up and started practicing Defense spells, the non-violence spell stopped functioning because of that, and he lost it at the same time? It was spectacularly unlikely, but he was that paranoid. So he had told Harry never to practice any potentially dangerous magic in the house.

He still had bad days, though they were generally very rare... but he was beginning to realise that when they did happen, they were much harder to cope with when Harry was at Hogwarts.

If he didn't have a mission when his mind went into Winter Soldier mode, it messed him up. When Harry had been about the house, he'd been able to focus on the mundane tasks and categorise them as part of a mission. They had to be done, and he was the one who had to do them. Even when Harry attended primary school, there had been tasks that revolved around his care to do during the days alone.

'Looking after Harry' was an acceptable mission when he fell into that mindset. He was able to twist the way the Winter Soldier thought, to assign Harry as an 'essential ally' to be protected. True, that designation used to mean killing anyone who so much as looked at the 'essential ally' funny, when he'd been with HYDRA... but he had almost instinctively turned that around, and made 'hunger', 'discomfort', and 'unpreparedness' the hostiles to be eliminated.

This was when he ended up giving Harry the most pragmatic and uncivilised advice, including things like how to manipulate people into telling you their life's story... or exactly where to strike to take an enemy's breath away.

Sometimes, it felt almost as though he had looked after - maybe even trained - kids before, while he was the Winter Soldier... but if so, those memories were among the ones his subconscious refused to look at in spite of Albus' healing.

He did  _ not _ want to think about that possibility.

When Harry wasn't there, however, neither was that 'mission' when he had a bad day. His job counted as a 'mission', too. It really was only his days off - alone - that were difficult. This was the first time this had happened on such a day.

So, instead, this time he actually did go and isolate himself, the way Dumbledore had once feared he might do when he was supposed to be taking care of Harry. He locked himself up in his room, and stood staring at the wall, trying in vain to find a way out of the prison that was this part of his own mind.

Then Steve called.

New mission: assist Steve.

\---

Steve had kind of expected to see Harry when he arrived at the house. It was the school holidays, after all.

When he asked Bucky, the answer came out strangely, as if instead of his best friend he was talking to some kind of robot or automaton. Monotone, and devoid of real feeling. "He wanted to stay at school with his friends."

"Buck, are you okay?"

Bucky stared at him for several long seconds, looking almost confused by the question, before finally answering. "No."

"What's wrong?"

Bucky shook his head ever-so-slightly. Little more than a twitch, really. It seemed like he either didn't want to answer or didn't know how. Steve took in the tension of his stance, the odd way he'd spoken, and began putting the pieces together.

Bucky had told him, before, about what HYDRA had done to him. Steve's therapist had told him a lot about this PTSD thing, including tells like avoiding eye contact and retreating into oneself. Steve wasn't entirely sure if his guess was right, but it sure looked like Bucky was 'having a bad day'.

Well, no HYDRA-hunting mission-planning today, then.

Carefully keeping his attention on Bucky, Steve feigned casual as he shrugged and breezed past him into the kitchen. He heard Bucky follow him, as he began rooting out a saucepan and a couple of mugs from the cupboards.

Bucky tried to take the pan away from him - usually a wise move, but there were a few things he could make without being a fire hazard thanks - but Steve held on, forcing casual into his tone as he shook his head. "Sit down, Buck. I got this."

Bucky obeyed far too promptly, stepping back and taking the nearest seat at the table. Usually, there'd be at least a token of resistance, if not a real concern for said fire hazard.

Now convinced that he was right to be worried, Steve carefully set about the task of making hot chocolate... the 'old fashioned' (in his opinion; proper) way, with the pan on the stove, instead of whatever flashy tech people used these days. It was one of the few things he was  _ good _ at cooking.

He found a bag of marshmallows that were apparently enchanted to float around in the air until you either ate them or mixed them with something, and carefully placed them so they hovered around the two filled mugs... they circled their respective mugs perfectly, like tiny airplanes just waiting for clearance to land. He couldn't help but smile with amusement at the oddity of it, before turning back to Bucky - one mug in each hand - and nodding towards the sitting room.

Bucky followed, again without the usual complaints.

The small fireplace in the living room, directly in front of the couch, crackled to life all on its own with a merry golden glow as they stepped into the room.

Steve set one mug down on a small table next to where Bucky would sit, and took the other side of the couch for himself. Bucky sat of his own accord, and picked up his mug.

Steve waited.

He watched as Bucky eyed the magic marshmallows for several seconds, before prodding them until they went into his mug. He waited patiently, as Bucky stared into the mug for almost three full minutes. Pretended not to be watching anymore, as Bucky took a sip of the still-warm chocolate... eyes fluttering closed, posture relaxing ever-so-slightly.

Finally, after almost another full minute, Bucky spoke. "You're a goddamned angel, Steve. There is no other explanation for your cooking to be that bad, and this to be so heavenly."

Steve couldn't begin to comprehend what had gone through Bucky's mind during those few minutes, but his ma always said; chocolate can ease most ills of the spirit. She'd told him cocoa was magic, and he'd believed it. In spite of everything he'd seen since finding out so much more about magic, he still believed it.

And here they were. The world didn't seem so bad now. Bucky didn't look so tense now.

Steve mimicked Bucky's actions with the marshmallows. "These are crazy," he muttered, watching them begin to melt.

Bucky smiled weakly. "Kids like 'em," he said, before taking another much longer drink from his mug.

Steve waited another few minutes, as they drank in comfortable silence, before asking, "Feel better?"

"A bit," Bucky conceded, staring into his mug. "Enough. It's- I don't know, it's kind of hard to explain."

"What you've been through would make anyone feel messed up."

Bucky snorted weakly. "You buying into the whole 'therapy' thing, now?"

"It does help, I think."

"Your secret trick for making perfect hot chocolate helps," Bucky retorted, some hint of his usual attitude coming back now.

Steve just waited, quietly sipping from his nearly-empty mug. The drink was beginning to get cold, but the room was still warm and welcoming.

Eventually, Bucky sighed and spoke again. "Albus said he healed me, but there's some things magic can't heal. I got my memories back, but that's part of the problem right there. I remember everything they made me do. Everything they did to me, to make me obey. Sometimes I slip back, feel like I'm still theirs. They only ever let me out of the cryochamber for missions - when I slip back and don't have a mission, it... I don't know how to deal with that."

"What defines a mission?" Steve asked thoughtfully.

"Well, I've always been able to convince myself 'taking care of Harry' is a mission," Bucky admitted. "Which is probably the only reason I've made it ten years without much help. I don't get like that often, but when I do..."

Steve nodded, and swiftly finished his now-cold chocolate before it became totally undrinkable. Bucky followed suit.

"Not sure if I should mention this now, or leave it until you're feeling more yourself...?" Steve asked.

Bucky shrugged slightly. "Won't know unless you say it, will you?"

"I've got a window of opportunity to check out the Siberia lead within the next two weeks," Steve explained. "I was hoping you'd be able to get me some of those magic trinkets to make it go smoother?"

Bucky grinned, but it felt almost hostile. Too many teeth and absolutely no warmth. "A mission to hurt HYDRA. Might not be what I need right now, but it sure sounds like what I want."

\---

Director Fury had ordered Clint Barton to lie to his fellow agents.

This wasn't unusual, but the subject matter sure was. He was to continue his ongoing assignment of keeping tabs on Captain America's apartment, monitor all the tech, etcetera... but now he had been instructed  _ not _ to report if it shorted out like it was prone to, and  _ not _ to tell anyone if the Captain just up and disappeared again.

Clint had seen a few clues in the three months he'd been on this assignment - clues Fury had ordered him not to share with anyone else, and all.

He'd noticed that when the tech went out, it was generally preceded by Cap putting his hand in his left trouser pocket. Clint had watched the Captain pull an object out of that pocket, after the tech went out... he didn't get a good look at it, but it was in the shape of a small sleek black disc. Cap always took this out and looked at it after the tech went out. Clint would bet his best bow that that disc was responsible for the hyper-localised blackouts, and Cap knew exactly what he was doing.

More recently, Cap would then bring out another device - he got a better look at that one, and would swear it was disguised as a pocket-watch - and seemed to handle it like one would a two-way video call... if said call were on a flip-phone disguised as a pocket watch. This was downright old-school spy movie grade shit, and Clint was kind of loving it. He'd swear he'd seen a Bond movie - or something similar - where a girl had a device like that in a makeup compact.

Clint never saw how Cap disappeared. He went out of line-of-sight of the windows, and Clint just plain didn't see him again until usually-several-hours has passed. So when the Captain stepped out of line of sight again, today - after his usual performance with the tiny little disc thing, and only a very brief pocket-watch video-call this time - Clint was resigned to keep his silence and wait out the few hours.

When the wait passed the longest time the Captain had vanished before, Clint started getting a bit antsy.

When it rolled past midnight - just over ten hours after the vanishing act - Clint finally gave in to his boredom and curiosity... and began to make his way over to break into the apartment... because why the hell not? There was a reason Fury liked him and most of the rest of SHIELD did  _ not. _ Clint was prone to breach of protocol in favour of instinct, and so far it had never  _ not _ paid off. Fury wouldn't have given him the orders he currently had, and not expected something like this to happen. Frankly, Clint was of the opinion that Fury was enough of a manipulator that he probably planned it this way.

And right now, Clint's gut was telling him three things... one; Captain Freakin' America was not up to anything  _ wrong, _ even if he was so very clearly up to  _ something. _ Two; there would be some sort of answer in the apartment, if he just went on over there to find it. And three; there should be something good in Cap's fridge, too.

Clint had been the one on the cameras, so he just radioed in that he was resetting his own tech for the night (a not uncommon procedure), set them to keep recording but not to stream on to HQ... and proceeded to investigate the biggest mystery SHIELD had going right now.

He was right about the fridge. Man, that was a lot of food.

Sandwich ingredients duly stolen, assembled, and being eaten as he worked, Clint did a full sweep of the apartment.

There weren't many personal touches. The space itself was mostly bare, with only a comfy couch and a computer table with chair set up in the living space. SHIELD already tracked his Internet use, and there had been nothing out of the ordinary there. First Cap had looked up historical stuff... then he'd gone looking for recent pop culture. He'd found a list of 'greatest movies ever' and 'best TV shows ever' and seemingly randomly picked from those to stream on his computer inbetween the real history lessons.

Judging by the running theme, Cap was a sci-fi fan. Star Wars, Star Trek (original series, Clint noted with approval), the Terminator, Doctor Who... the only non-sci-fi movie on the list seemed to be the Princess Bride. Yep, good taste.

Clint checked the few cute knickknacks, but they were all as they appeared. No hidden compartments or anything else fun. Just ornaments; for all Clint knew they might have come with the apartment.

The actual private stuff turned out to be in a sketchpad hidden neatly away in the bedside table.

He'd never known Captain America was an artist... but these were  _ good _ .

There were portraits of all Cap's old pals from the Howling Commandos, including Peggy and Howard as well as the actual soldiers that'd followed him. There were several more images of a certain Sergeant Barnes than of any of the others... but the history Clint had read covered the fact that they'd been friends since they were kids, and the portraits of him seemed to range from when he had been a young teenager up to during the war, so no big surprise there.

There were others, too. Faces Clint didn't know.

There was a waiflike woman who vaguely resembled the images Clint had seen of the Captain before the serum... and a young girl, maybe seven or eight, with curly ringlets in her hair with the same sort of fleeting resemblance to Barnes. Maybe they were family members of the Captain and his best friend?

There was an image of Barnes with a woman on each arm - a blonde and a brunette - both laughing like he'd just told a very funny joke. Clint didn't know who either woman was, but their features weren't as defined as most of the drawings, so maybe Cap barely knew them, too?

Then right after that, on the last page to be drawn in so far, was a boy, maybe ten or eleven, with black hair and an odd, smudged mark on his forehead. He didn't have any of those close family resemblances Clint had thought he'd seen in the first two unfamiliar faces... but something about him rang as important to Clint's gut instincts.

Then it clicked.

The kid was wearing a baseball cap... for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Those had been Brooklyn in Cap's day. This kid was  _ modern. _

Clint was pretty damned sure he'd not seen Cap with any kids... and this boy was kind of distinctive, too.

Clint felt distinctly uncomfortable all of a sudden. He did not mess with kids, even though some people at SHIELD felt it was okay, or even a good idea. There was no way he was going to endanger this kid, especially if  _ this _ had anything to do with why the Captain was disappearing all the time.

Clint wasn't exactly the best at this sort of connection, but the sketch of the kid was right after an image of Barnes with a pair of ladies - what if the kid was family? Okay, family of Cap's best friend? Clint would go out of his way to help and keep secrets for less; therefore Captain Freakin' America very likely would, too.

He picked up the pencil from next to the sketchbook... and lightly drew the old version of the Dodgers symbol on the bottom corner of the page, well out of the way of the actual artwork, but where it would be seen nonetheless.

Basically, a warning. You've been spied on. I know... and I'm on your side here.

With that done, Clint put the sketchpad and pencil back where he found them, and left... and didn't mention his little foray to anyone, not even Fury, nevermind what he learned from it.

\---


End file.
